One of the main objectives of the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) is to lead companies to measure their environmental and social impact, and to understand the interconnection of their activities with the environment and society.

To do this, companies must produce a certain number of CSR indicators associated with their practices and allowing their performance to be monitored.

Find out in this article What are the best CSR indicators to measure to get you up and running with the CSRD, or simply to monitor your progress on ESG issues !

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What are the CSR indicators to include in your sustainability report?

Managing your CSR strategy and monitoring the evolution of its environmental or social impact is not easy, especially given the multitude of challenges covered by the ESG. When starting out in the process, how do you know which KPIs are relevant? When asked by our stakeholders, what are the essential indicators to produce?

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Choosing your indicators thanks to the analysis of double materiality

One of the first steps - even before defining indicators, is to sorting through all ESG topics, to keep only the topics that are relevant to your business.

For companies subject to the CSRD, this sorting exercise is calleddouble materiality analysis, and is a mandatory step before starting to produce the report.

This exercise allows you toidentify consistent challenges in relation to your activities, your geography, your value chain, and to select only those with the most priority. These priority issues are linked to your greatest impacts or to your greatest dependencies, generating significant risks for the continuity of your business.

For companies embarking on the process voluntarily, an exercise similar to double materiality analysis will allow you to highlight the issues most in line with your sector. This exercise can be based on a sectoral benchmark, on known standards, or even on a dialogue with your internal or external stakeholders.

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What other information should you provide in your sustainability report?

There is no doubt about it, the production of CSR indicators alone does not make it possible to report on the extent of ESG performance of a company. Indeed, it does not make it possible to report on all the commitments made by the company in terms of reducing environmental or social impact, nor to highlight all the actions taken or planned within the corporate ecosystem to manage the challenges.

The CSRD makes it clear: a comprehensive CSR strategy is a coherent set between :

• your policies, describing your strong commitments on each subject
• your actions, testifying concretely to the means you give yourself to achieve your commitments
• your goals, in the short, medium or long term, concerning each issue and for each commitment
• your quantitative indicators, to manage your trajectory year after year and validate the achievement of your goals.

Within your CSR, sustainability or voluntary report, it will be very important to highlight your policies, actions and objectives, alongside your key performance indicators. Moreover, these elements correspond to almost two thirds of the sustainability report according to the CSRD.

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Will the CSRD indicators change with the Omnibus proposal?

The Omnibus bill, currently under discussion in the European Parliament, calls into question the reporting framework around CSRD, both the scope of companies concerned and the content of reporting standards.

One of the elements mentioned in the proposal is the ambition to reduce the scope of the content of ESRs, remove the reporting obligation of certain narrative data points, and by focusing on quantitative indicators. The CSR indicators will not change in the CSRD with the Omnibus proposal, they will simply represent a larger part of the report..

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What are the CSR indicators for voluntary SMEs and VSEs?

Fortunately, managing your ESG performance is not reserved for companies subject to CSRD! Numerous SMEs and VSEs are also getting in working order to improve their environmental or social impact., often following the request of their clients (banks, investors, etc.).

Without a dedicated team on the subject, how do you choose which indicators to measure?

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What is the standard for voluntary SMEs?

For companies not subject to CSRD (SMEs, micro-enterprises), it is possible to rely on existing standards to determine your indicators. We recommend that you use the standard for voluntary SMEs (VSME), in particular because it was built around the questions most often asked by stakeholders.

Published by EFRAG in December 2024, the VSME standard is a genuine simplified CSRD, containing 18 reporting requirements (instead of 82), and containing the recurring information to be included in any CSR strategy in order to be able to share it effectively.

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The 2 VSME modules

The VSME standard is organized into 2 modules:

• The basic module, for all voluntary companies, it allows to present the company and its understanding of sustainability issues (environment, social, governance)
• The complete module, for companies often solicited by their business relationships on ESG topics, it complements the first by including the information most requested by investors, funders or client companies, in particular information to draw up the risk profile of your company.

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The share of CSR indicators within the VSME

Adapted for smaller companies that do not have a formalized CSR strategy, the VSME standard focuses mainly on quantitative indicators. It is in fact more balanced than the ESRS, and contains about as many narrative data points as KPIs.

Thus, companies can easily produce a report in line with their capacity, or effectively manage their CSR performance, even if not included in a global strategy.

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The checklist of the best CSR indicators

You will have understood it, All companies can start measuring and managing their performance on ESG issues now, whether they are subject to the CSRD or whether they mobilize voluntarily.

Here are the best CSR indicators to manage, regardless of your level of maturity on the subjects!

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The 15 best CSR indicators for its sustainability report

1. Total number of employees by gender
2. Staff turnover rate
3. Number of disabled workers
4. Average number of hours of training per person
5. Number of cases of work-related health problems
6. Wage gap between men and women
7. Compensation ratio
8. Number of consumer complaints received
9. Number of corruption incidents
10. GHG emissions by scope
11. Total energy consumption related to operations
12. Quantity of substances of concern generated or used during operations
13. Total water consumption, especially in areas with high water stress
14. Expected lifespan of products placed on the market
15. Total waste generated, including hazardous waste

To find out more, find the list of 50 mandatory CSRD indicators.

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The 10 best CSR indicators to start your ESG strategy

1. Total number of employees
2. Staff turnover rate
3. Workplace accident rate
4. Wage gap between men and women
5. Executive parity ratio
6. Total electricity consumption
7. GHG emissions by scope
8. Number of sites owned or managed near or in a biodiversity sensitive area
9. Total water consumption
10. Total waste generated

To find out more, find the list of 50 VSME indicators.

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Conclusion

Whether you are a large group, whose CSR strategy has been honed and followed for many years, or a small business that wants to start the process, whether you are motivated by regulations, by pressure from your stakeholders or by a gain in competitiveness, you can From now on, monitor your environmental and social impacts and limit the occurrence of risks using these lists of indicators !

Do you need support on these topics? Our team is at your disposal, contact us!

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