A structured materiality assessment is an essential foundation for effective sustainability strategy-making and for setting goals that are relevant to your business and its stakeholders. A structured materiality assessment can also support communication within and outside your organization and serves as a tool for risk assessment and trend spotting. It is a cornerstone of the most widely recognized reporting frameworks, such as the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB) and ISO 26000. Materiality assessment is increasingly used as a strategic business and risk assessment tool, with implications going beyond corporate responsibility (CR) and reporting. Leading companies employ it to embed sustainability within existing business processes and the overall business strategy.
Organizations are confronted with a wide range of ever-changing issues and topics. Material topics are those that have an impact on a business (e.g. the capacity to generate revenue) and are considered important to reflect an organization's own economic, environmental and social impacts (e.g. pollution, congestion, noise). Additionally, they are seen as important in terms of their capacity to influence the decisions and perceptions of stakeholders.
Materiality can be used for any combination of the following:
- To support the development of a vision and strategy on sustainability/ESG and to identify the risks and opportunities related to sustainability/ESG;
- To generate content for the sustainability/ESG report in accordance with global standards and to identify strategies and initiatives to capitalize on sustainability/ESG;
- To facilitate high-level communication about the most material topics inside and outside of the organization;
- To identify new assumptions and trends that may become relevant to the company in the future and prepare for new expectations from stakeholders.
Our sustainability and ESG experts will guide you through the process of selecting the most material topics for your organization, as well as identifying relevant risks and opportunities for your company.
Materiality analysis
How we can help
KPMG professionals can provide the following services to help you develop and implement your sustainability/ESG strategy:
- ESG risk management: Identifying and mapping of an organization’s ESG-related current and emerging risks and opportunities. Providing assistance in managing these risks and opportunities. Implementing an appropriate governance model enabling organizations to build a sustainable business in the long term;
- Materiality assessment workshop: Prepare and facilitate a structured internal materiality assessment workshop with key-representatives of the company to think through and assess a longlist of material topics;
- Benchmark analysis: A peer analysis and desk research will be used to prepare and facilitate an external benchmark assessment to understand the relevant sustainability aspects and ambitions of the company. The analysis will serve as a critical assessment and benchmark of the existing analysis of the company, which will focus on providing guidance by sharing our insights and experiences from other companies. This external benchmark analysis can also be combined with the materiality assessment workshop, providing external views and insights, thereby resulting in an integrated materiality matrix;
- Stakeholder consultation: Provide assistance and guidance in mapping and prioritizing stakeholders, developing stakeholder surveys and interviewing key stakeholders, as well as capturing and processing the results of the stakeholder consultation and integrating it into the materiality assessment;
- Sustainability/ESG roadmap: Development of a roadmap for future actions. We will accompany management in the development of the sustainability/ESG roadmap, capturing the way forward for the company. This entails a visualization of efforts, including precise targets to be achieved, identifying roles and responsibilities and setting deadlines. We will also provide recommendations regarding reporting requirements.
