Categories

Asia’s Best Sustainability Report (Large Company) award goes to the report, which provides a comprehensive, balanced, focused and coherent description of sustainability strategy, practices, performance and outcomes on issues that reflect the business’s most significant economic, social and environmental impacts. The best report will have a clear strategy, goals and targets and provide examples of practice to demonstrate what the company has achieved so far and outline its plans to make continued progress. The company will also disclose where it has failed to meet objectives or addressed specific risks or challenges. The winning report will excel in providing an overall picture of the sustainability impacts of the company’s business and meaningful leadership commitment.

ASRA judges will focus on strategic approach to sustainability, meaningful and relevant leadership opening statement, stakeholder engagement, materiality disclosure, coverage of all significant impacts of the business, including challenges, and clear presentation of multi-year performance results.

Notes:

1. We define a business with over US $100 million in annual revenue at the Group level as a large company.
2. A report submitted for this category will not be accepted for the following categories: Asia’s Best Integrated Report.

This category is for the Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with less than US $100 million in annual group-level revenue. The winning report will be well-rounded, demonstrating a long-term approach to integrating sustainability practice in the business in a way that is relevant for a smaller or medium company. The report should include economic, environmental and social impacts, focusing on the issues that show how the company is making a difference for its stakeholders.

ASRA judges will focus on the strategic approach to sustainability and disclosure of material topics, meaningful and relevant leadership opening statement, stakeholder engagement, coverage of baseline sustainability impacts of the business, and clear presentation of sustainability performance results.

Note: This category is for small and medium enterprises. SME subsidiaries of large corporations should not submit entries for this category.

This category is reserved for state-owned or state-controlled organisations. The public sector organisations may include government departments and agencies, government authorities, ministries, state-owned corporations (wholly owned by the government), health services, local government and government-funded universities. The public sector organisations are welcome to submit their sustainability report, CSR report or a similar report for this category.

ASRA judges will focus on how the reporting organisation manages its economic, environmental and social impacts, expectations and obligations and how it contributes to the national or local socio-economic development and environmental goals.

This category is for privately-owned companies which are not listed on a stock exchange. The best report will have a clear strategy, goals and targets and provide examples of practice to demonstrate what the company has achieved so far and outline its plans to make continued progress. The company will also disclose where it has failed to meet objectives or addressed specific risks or challenges. The winning report will excel in providing an overall picture of the sustainability impacts of the company’s business and meaningful leadership commitment.
ASRA judges will focus on the strategic approach to sustainability and disclosure of material topics, meaningful and relevant leadership opening statement, stakeholder engagement, coverage of baseline sustainability impacts of the business, and clear presentation of sustainability performance results.

ASRA judges will focus on the strategic approach to sustainability and disclosure of material topics, meaningful and relevant leadership opening statement, stakeholder engagement, coverage of baseline sustainability impacts of the business, and clear presentation of sustainability performance results.

This category is for privately-owned companies which are not listed on a stock exchange. The best report will have a clear strategy, goals and targets and provide examples of practice to demonstrate what the company has achieved so far and outline its plans to make continued progress. The company will also disclose where it has failed to meet objectives or addressed specific risks or challenges. The winning report will excel in providing an overall picture of the sustainability impacts of the company’s business and meaningful leadership commitment.

ASRA judges will focus on strategic approach to sustainability, meaningful and relevant leadership opening statement, coverage of all significant sustainability impacts of the business, approach to stakeholder engagement, and clear presentation of multi-year sustainability performance results.

This category is for recognising the best practice in corporate governance. The winning report will demonstrate leadership practice in board composition, structure and responsibility, ethics and integrity, risk management, stakeholder engagement, how sustainability is integrated into the reporting organisation’s governance.

ASRA judges will focus on the comprehensiveness and quality of governance disclosures, including the Board oversight and performance relating to sustainability strategy, risks and opportunities.

This award will go to a report demonstrating exceptional leadership by the senior-most executive, typically the CEO, of the reporting organisation in addressing economic, environmental and social impacts, risks and opportunities and stewardship through the CEO message.

ASRA judges will look for the voice from the top, and a credible and authentic account of sustainability issues, performance, challenges and outlook.

This category awards the most comprehensive disclosure of human rights assessment, risks, policies, strategies, targets and outcomes.

ASRA judges will look for how clearly the report demonstrates the reporting organisation’s assessment and management of its human rights risks in its value chain.

This award recognises reports that clearly demonstrate how a company’s sustainability strategy supports one or more UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The winning report goes beyond describing a high level of alignment with the SDGs overall. Instead, the winning report will provide an in-depth account of the selected SDGs, providing a detailed review of which SDGs goals – and targets – are advanced through the organisation’s business and how it intends to amplify its positive impacts.

ASRA judges will focus on strategic integration with selected SDGs, description of SDG targets supported and plans to amplify impacts supporting SDGs.

This category is for recognising the best practice in materiality assessment and disclosure. The winning report demonstrates the due process in identifying and prioritising material impacts, why they are important and what the organisation is doing to address them. The report clearly demonstrates an understanding of material impacts, risks and opportunities, and its strategies to deal with each of these. The report will also illustrate how it navigates various concepts of materiality to meet the information needs of its various stakeholders.

ASRA judges will focus on details of the process by which material impacts were defined and prioritised, description of organisation’s impacts on the environment, society and economy across the value chain, description of the influence of material impacts on stakeholder views and opinions, stakeholder engagement for identifying material impacts, application of industry-specific materiality frameworks and benchmarks, explanation of the importance of material impacts, and performance in addressing material impacts.

The award of this category will go to the report, which demonstrates the organisation’s strategies, goals and objectives in engaging with key stakeholders and using the engagement to develop effective sustainability programmes. This organisation describes its framework for stakeholder engagement and provides evidence of real engagement with stakeholders.

ASRA judges will focus on the process for identifying and prioritising stakeholders, strategies and approaches adopted for engaging critical stakeholders, goals and targets, methods for measuring the effectiveness of engagement, the inclusion of stakeholder views in the report, how the organisation has used stakeholder engagement in identifying sustainability topics for reporting, and outcome of stakeholder engagement including successes and failures.

The reporting organisation applies international standards and best practices for providing a credible account of its climate-related governance, risk management, strategy and metrics and targets. The report provides comprehensive detail of the reporting organisation’s measuring, monitoring, and reporting of its GHG emissions. In addition, the report discloses targets, plans and strategies to transition to low-carbon operations, including reduction and mitigation.

ASRA judges will consider the organisation’s commitment to the Science-Based Targets, the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) recommendations and the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP). ASRA judges will also look for carbon mitigation strategy and targets, detailed carbon footprint disclosure, description of carbon mitigation practices, and details of carbon mitigation performance across all Scopes.

The category celebrates the leading edge in environmental reporting by comprehensively considering the most material ecological impacts of the reporting organisation. The winner demonstrates the strategic importance of its environmental initiatives to its business and its stakeholders, identifies specific environmental impacts and reports performance. Ideally, the report will disclose multi-year targets and performance.

ASRA judges will focus on environmental strategy and management systems, description of environmental impacts, risks and opportunities, explanation of environmental practices, targets and performance.

This award is for the report that reflects all the elements of active employee engagement and responsible workplace undertaken by the company and how these contribute to business success in a strategic way. The report covers the full range of workplace impacts on employees, including attraction, retention, training and development, compensation and benefits, safety, labour rights, occupational health and safety, labour and management relations, internal communications and employee engagement.

ASRA judges will focus on responsible workplace strategy and targets, description of workplace impacts on employees and the business, description of key practices, and performance results, including employee surveys.

This award is for the best disclosure on organisational gender equality and diversity. It covers the way the organisation practices inclusive policies in all areas of diversity and inclusion and achieves results. This goes beyond a general statement of commitment and shows explicitly how the organisation invests and encourages an inclusive and diverse culture with equal opportunity relating to gender, gender identity, socio-economic and cultural backgrounds, older employees, and any other relevant dimensions of diversity. It covers recruitment, development, pay, promotion, and mechanisms in place to advance diversity.

ASRA judges will focus on diversity and inclusion strategy and targets, description of diversity impacts on employees and on the business, description of key diversity and inclusion frameworks and practices and detailed performance results, including pay and promotion equality.

This award is for the most transparent and comprehensive supply chain disclosure. The winning report describes its supply chain, critical impacts along the supply chain, and ways the company ensures sustainable and ethical supply chain management. The best reports in this category will disclose specific steps taken to engage suppliers in ethical conduct and the results of social and environmental supplier assessments and interventions.

ASRA judges will focus on clear description of the supply chain, approach to sustainable procurement, the performance of suppliers against defined standards, and disclosure of measures taken to mitigate supply chain risk.

This award goes to the winner who provided a coherent account of its community investment, impacts and the difference made. The winning report will link community investment to its broader role in the community at the local level and in society at a national, regional or global level. Community reporting includes philanthropic programmes, employee volunteering and industry engagement and demonstrates how it meets identified social needs while contributing to business objectives. This category also includes specific engagement in disaster relief or emergency assistance where required.

ASRA judges will focus on strategic alignment of community investment, clear description of activities and investment in cash/kind, measured reach and outcomes of community investment, and business benefits of community investment.