Mastering the EcoVadis Methodology: 2022 Assessors Guide

[00:00:00]um but i think herman we're gonna jump towards the next slide where we're gonna uh move more into the eco-virus methodology yeah for sure so maybe a short introduction and and can i can quickly kick it off from my side um obviously i've been hosting uh quite some eco famous webinars already last year so um for some another new face to the eco-friendly webinar series hosted by next year projects but my name is robert smith i'm the commercial lead within excel projects my expertise mostly is on esg and sustainability strategy and my focus area is mostly on europe and the united states commercial wise um furthermore i have a background in commercial economics um ambassador of the central procurement pledge and working for nexio projects now a little bit more than two years um and then with me on the webinar is my colleague herman so maybe herman an introduction from your side as well yeah thank you so much robert very happy to be here and hello to everyone where you are dialing in from my name is harman khrubia i'm an esg analyst sustainability consultant here at next year projects for the last seven going on eight months now i'm originally from south africa i've lived in the netherlands for the last a good eight years before that i've been lucky enough to live and work in a few other countries a little bit about my background i have a bachelor of science in management of international social challenges as well as a master's of science in international public management and policy so a bit of a more public sector background um and to really understand where i'm coming from and my passion and sustainability where it all started is um as well um my internship at the united nations where i worked at um the department of economic and social affairs mostly coordinating the achievement of the sustainable sustainable development goals so i'm sure you're all very much aware of those and with that i would like to help into the agenda of this webinar so just to guide you a little bit through what we're going to be covering here first of all i will hand it over to my colleague robert in a second to cover our points of view um who we are as next year projects why we have an authority to speak on this and how we can help you then we're really going to dive into the core of the webinar to tackle the eco virus model really taking you step by step breaking it down as simple as possible because we know when you hear the word methodology it's often associated with complicatedness complexity and we're really trying to take away from that and make it as understandable as possible going from registration all the way to when you receive the scorecard and how to interpret it which is point three understanding the results and of course if there are any other questions that remain after the webinar we will provide you with the needed information you can contact us with so with that i will hand it over to you robert yes thank you very much uh herman and indeed in this chapter we're gonna do a short introduction about nexio projects some key partnerships that we have and also for you for the people who are not familiar with with nexio projects just a short introduction and the correlation between nexio and eco faris so nexio projects international sustainability consultancy firm and also the worldwide and certified support partner from ecovares besides ikova is another key partnership that we have is that we're also one of the 20 global support partners of b corp and also a certified assessor for carbon footprint models for the natural capital partners group a little bit about about nexio projects and our partnership with ecovaris we have done the exercise ourselves as well nexia was awarded with the platinum medal with 79 points um last year um so what we say is we practice what we preach um we know the struggle and we have gone through the exercise ourselves uh as well um so we know exactly where company companies are struggling with the most with regards to filling in the questionnaire understanding the scorecard but also from scratch as we are tackling more today understanding the eco virus model and the methodology um maybe some backgrounds on the partnership since 2018 we partnered with ecovaris which gives us unique insights in their methodology to support eco virus clients with the questionnaire and the submission and in 2020 next year projects became the only global partner of ecovales to support also with the implementation to make sure that the policies the procedures the uh the trainings from companies are comply with with eco virus and international standards so it's a short introduction about nexio projects and our partnership a key partnership for today with eco faris thank you so much robert and then now we would like to take this opportunity now that we have both introduced ourselves as speakers as well as next year projects as a whole um some of you who may follow us on the social media such as linkedin and other platforms might have seen we've gone through a rebranding recently so we'd like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new mission vision and some values that are related to that so as you can see starting on the left side with our vision we decided to go for a vision that's a little bit different than usual and you can read here uh dot dot in an abundant world so to explain the thought process behind this vision um the reason why next year projects chose this is that we believe in an abundant and bright future and that this can only be achieved through collective inclusive and diverse approach so really what this means is um we want to each of our individuals here next year projects want to contribute to this shared vision by having our own individual visions as well that we can pursue with passion and understanding so to give you a little bit of a personal example my own vision that i'd like to bring to the table is tackling global disparities through fostering sustainable development in an abundant world so just to give you a little bit of an understanding and of course this relates to our overall mission which is supporting organizations on their journey from compliance to purpose so we really want to take clients on this journey together sustainability is extremely vital of course we want to move away from this check the box approach to a more purpose-driven purpose led really embedding it into your sustainability strategy and not just again like i said taking the boxes but i have some interesting statistics to share with all of you of course before we dive into the methodology to set some context so as you can see here on the slide presented oh a good note to remember is that we will be sharing the slides with you later on so i'm not going to go into each of the statistics um but if you are interested you can go and read them up later after the webinar once we send them to you but i would like to highlight one or two uh just for you to digest in the background while you listen to the rest of the webinar so the first one is that 92 of companies are adopting their business strategies and models to be more sustainable and plan to increase investment in sustainability i'm sure a lot to a lot of you this is not very surprising sustainability has become much more discussed within companies also on the international level so this just goes to show you that it is indeed true and it is something to consider moving forward in your operations and to kind of give a monetary um support to this claim the next statistic is that 649 billion us dollars has been poured into esg focused funds globally during the year 2021 alone this is setting a new record for esg related investments and it really just goes to show you that companies and investors alike are valuing esg valuing the benefits that it brings not only to your quality of your organization but also to the benefits of this strategy that it can help you develop so now um before diving deeper into the ecobodist methodology i'm going to launch a little bit of a pull um so please engagement is key here we really want to see what you guys think and take some time to answer it i believe the poll has been launched yeah perfectly yeah maybe the the the poll really is to to see if from the participant perspective if your company already has done an eco virus assessment so the answer is we don't have a medal but that can also mean that you're planning on but that is more the last option um and then obviously the different metals within the eco various platform that you obtained i don't know herman i think you can see the live results how are we doing how many uh responses you already have in yeah thank you robert they're coming in extremely fast we're at around 60 so i'm just gonna give it a little few more seconds uh really loving the engagement so far there's gonna be a few more pulls as robert explained earlier so would really appreciate if you guys keep up the enthusiasm uh moving forward as well so we'll just give a few more seconds to get those last ones in [Music] okay perfect i think that is good enough so right now i will then share the results with you all so as you can see here um 10 have said that they um do have an equivalence assessment but they do not have a medal the largest percentage you can see on your screen is that 27 saying that they have a silver medal which is already very uh impressive and later on in the webinar robert will break down each metal and the scoring system as well that's related to it and perhaps interestingly enough we see that a nine percent have a platinum medal as well so very well done uh in regards to that i think also amazing to see herman that those companies who already have platinum which is 15 today in a webinar i think is even maybe a record of plotting the metal holders that are joining the record the webinar that they're still uh um willing to learn more about ecovirus methodology and also to improve their overall sustainability performance so also special welcome obviously to the to the platinum metal metal holders on that set yep for sure that's super impressive and for those who are already experienced with the ego bodies assessment we're hoping to answer any of those doubts clear up any misunderstandings and any questions you may have those who have never done an ecovirus assessment it's also perfectly fine we hope to break it down in a simple way so that you can understand exactly what you will perhaps be getting yourself into so without further ado we will get into the the main content which is the defining sustainability and the four pillars that are related to ecovatis so ecovirus really structures the assessment based off of these four pillars presented in front of you so you can see environment labor and human rights ethics and sustainable procurement so further breaking these down starting with environment on the left-hand side you can see two sub-themes one operations and one products so just going quickly through you can see in the operations within the environment pillar ecovatis considers aspects such as energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions water biodiversity so for example if your operations have an influence on the natural world around you so the plant and animal life for example then local and accidental pollutions you can think of different spills that may occur and then lastly for operations materials and chemicals and waste then for products you have product use product end of life customer health and safety and environmental services and advocacy so for this one you may be thinking that it's maybe not the most clear of the bunch but with environmental services and advocacy this is really showing that your company is participating in advocacy outside of your operations so really you can think of perhaps planting tree initiatives for example or contributing to the environmental community around you then moving on to the labor and human rights pillar of course you can think of human resources as a very vital aspect to this where your common topics such as employee health and safety working conditions social dialogue and perhaps interesting to clear up here with social dialogue egovirus really means the for example in employing employee representatives allowing employees to join representative bodies labor unions participating in collective agreements for example this are different versions of social dialogue career management and training as well and then moving on to human rights a bit more of an externally oriented aspect of labor and human rights you have child labor forced labor and human trafficking three things every organization will definitely want to avoid popping up in their operations um diversity discrimination and harassment and external stakeholder human rights so this is again similarly to the environmental services and advocacy a bit more of an externally focused um initiative where you participate in initiatives upholding the human rights in the community around you for example moving on to the ethical pillar you of course have corruption and corruption is a very broad topic so you can think of different aspects such as fraud bribery monarchy money laundering as you can see anti-competitive practices responsible information management which can be broken down into data security information retention and topics similar to this and last but definitely not least is that of sustainable procurement so really all environmental and social practices that is related to your supply chain and your suppliers and this is becoming much more important and noticed because as many of you may know that greenhouse gas emissions a large part of this depending on your operations do come from your suppliers so this is also very much relevant within the ecovatus assessment and with that i will pass it on to robert to kickstart the explanation of the ecovatis model great thank you herman indeed let's dive deeper into the eco values methodology where i will kick it off with just a small step back on the ecovatus model how does it work what are the benefits of of ecovalles as you see here you see a couple of points but just from my side as an explanation to take a little step back about ecovaris ecovanes the goal of violence is to create a universal uh scorecard where company companies can showcase their sustainability performance towards their suppliers towards their partners in various tenders um so ecovalles is actually a sort of an umbrella rating where you can measure your sustainability performance as a company and it is not where often the confusion is another certification you can upload the various certifications that you have obtained as a company within the ecovirus rating so ecovirus is really an umbrella rating where you can measure your overall sustainability performance and where you have a universal scorecard on all the pillars of sustainability on how you score and with the results of your of your scorecard you're being benchmarked to the other companies in the industry you've selected on the platform etc um so that's a little introduction on the ecovas model and obviously there are quite some benefits uh on eco valids which are reflected here in this slide as well um maybe however we can go to to the next slide where we will deep dive a little bit more into the ecovaris model indeed you already switched it um so the eco virus model so these are the main four steps of the of the model um and we're just gonna walk through them step by step the first one is you have to register online so you need to onboard your company on the eco virus platform an absolutely crucial phase where we see um i'm sure herman knows this as well but with our clients we see it a lot that the onboarding didn't go correctly with regards to selecting the right entity or the right specific office the the type of assessment do you want to do a groups assessment an entity assessment the industry is the industry really reflecting your businesses operations absolutely crucial elements because after this onboarding the questionnaire that you get is for example based on the industry that you have selected in this onboarding phase also you are being benchmarked with companies who are in the same industry so for example to pick one from the onboarding program within eagle valleys selecting the right industry is absolutely crucial in this uh step one where you need to register your company uh on the platform and next your purchase we are also happy to help and give you some guidance on that um but this is an absolute absolutely crucial phase after you have registered your company on the ecovirus platform it's time to answer the questionnaire so the questionnaire can various in size depending on your company size from a couple of questions per pillar to in total 100 to 150 questions uh divided on the four pillars of sustainability which hermann just explained um eco-violence is 100 evidence-based so all the answers that you give in the e-compliance questionnaire needs to be backed up with evidence so to just give one example if your company has solar panels on the roof of the office where you're located in there needs to be a specific uh type of evidence that showcases that those solar panels are on top of the of the roof of the of the office or even maybe an invoice of installation um so that it's it's very evident evidence based since there's no physical audit in the in the ecovirus process and it's 100 online self-assessment after you have filled in the questionnaire and you have submitted a questionnaire on the ecovirus platform there's an expert analysis where an eco virus analyst will deep dive into your questionnaire and will reflect the findings in a in a scorecard and this scorecard is your final rating and that rating is reflected in most of the times a medal where the medal now starts from 47 onwards um 47 points onwards so it can also be that you score below 47 and then you do not have a medal but you always have a scorecard where you see how you scored on sustainability performance um but in your scorecard your sustainability performance is reflected you see your benchmark results you see the trends in your industry so it's your scorecard is really um the final result of your eco values assessment where you can share your scorecard with your clients your partners and you can request other score cards from your from your suppliers for example um and that is more or less the the eco files model so it has four main steps um onboarding your company answering the questionnaire ecovirus is going to do an analysis on the questionnaire that you fill in as a company and then comes back to you with your sustainability rating so this is really step one uh the eco files onboarding process to register uh online to deep dive a little bit more as i said um the onboarding phase is absolutely crucial and we wanted to also give an example by maturity comparison we always make the comparison in the sense of from an excel perspective um we as a consultancy firm have also done the eco files assessment as i said in the beginning of the webinar and for us the weight is not too much on sustainable procurement obviously as a as a consultancy firm um we don't buy too many things i think pens and laptops are the most common things from our perspective hermann and comparing that for example to a transportation company um there's a totally different weight within the field of sustainability um so from an excel perspective when we onboard ourselves the weight on the sustainable procurement part was not too much but for example on the labour human rights right part was almost to the maximum and if you compare to other companies who do buy a lot of elements for example high-risk countries the the weight on sustainable procurement is is higher on that sense so here you see also how important it is to select the right industry so that the weight on the different pillars is also in correlation with your business activities thank you so much robert for that clear explanation hope you guys now have a better understanding of start to finish now we will really dive into each one of these steps that robert has explained um kick starting it off with the core of the methodology really what ecovatis is looking at what kind of different aspects they are looking at um so i would like to explain that to you all um you have three different aspects here you can see on the screen policies actions and results so i will go through them one by one and hopefully uh clear them up for you as often times when we see clients going through assessments there is some confusion with exactly what they interpret to be policies and what they interpret to be actions and what ecovada's expectations are so starting on the left-hand side with policies these are really you can think of your formalized documents these overarching a bit broader documents that really solidify the mission uh value statements the different principles your organization your company puts forward and you um best practice is to then in these formalized policy documents set those objectives and set those targets as clearly as possible what we often see and this is just to give you a little bit of an analyst insights i go through a lot of different documentation from clients and one point of confusion that comes up or often uh is questioned is exactly okay what is meant by a policy um as many clients tend to say that they have a policy but then in eco virus's eyes this is a bit more interpreted as a measure so a policy really um the best practice is to have quantitative and qualitative targets and objectives in place so you can think for example um in an environmental policy you would have we want to have an x percent decrease of our greenhouse gas emissions by a certain year that would be an example of a quantitative target similarly for labor and human rights you can think in the labor and human rights policy you could set a target we want to have a health and safety training for 100 of our employees by a certain year and these would all be valued very much by iguavadas these targets and objectives are very much important so then relatedly endorsements are another aspect of policies and the most common examples you can think of really is where your company is ascribing or committing to an external csr initiative or principle you can think of the united nations global compact they have 10 principles it can be as easy as becoming a signatory to the ungc where you say you send a letter from your ceo saying we as organization x we are a signatory of the umgc and you commit and you then have this endorsement similarly the sustainable development goals of the united nations can be another example you can then see that policies here has 25 and this means that all of the policies that you submit to ecovalus as proof your documentation um your policy documentation will contribute to 25 of the score at the end so this is a cumulative across all of the pillars so your environmental policies labor policies etc then moving on to the actions you can see here this has a 40 um contribution to the score and if you think about this logically it makes a lot of sense because if we start if we think of these three as a bit of an upside down pyramid going from uh wide to narrow policies or those wide overarching statements with objectives and targets you move them a bit more specifically to okay we have these policies in place how are we going to implement them in terms of procedures uh in a concrete basis in our day-to-day operations so this is why clients usually have many more procedures in place than they do policies so this of course makes sense that it is a bigger part of the waiting so for this you can really think of any procedures in place that specify protective equipment that employees need to have to combat to do certain tasks for example mandatory trainings you can think of different whistleblowing procedures you have in place to report ethical misconduct these would all be examples of measures and in the actions section similarly uh certifications also follow within this and third-party audits so popular certifications that you can think of as listed on the slide is the different iso certifications so iso 14001 45001 we will list some examples for your overview a bit later on as well but um you can also think of third-party audits conducted on your finances or your accounts or even third-party audits on health and safety of your facilities for example these could all be uploaded as proof for the action section and then last for the action section is coverage one that is often also a point of confusion for our clients we see what is meant by coverage is the level of deployment or dissemination of your actions and certifications so i think this is best explained with an example let's say that you as a company have multiple facilities across different countries perhaps even in different continents it's great if you have some sustainable actions or certifications in place at one facility but this is not necessarily representative of all of your facilities so what ecovatis looks for in coverage to see how you are internalizing and how you are manifesting these sustainable actions across your operations so obviously the more spread out it is and the more evident it is in your different facilities the better and the higher your coverage which of course is a positive effect on your score then moving on to the last section which is your results and if i can use the metaphor of the upside down triangle again it's really the bottom the most narrow point so once you have these policies in place you have procedures to manifest them in your day-to-day operations in a more concrete and tangible basis uh you then have your reporting so you can think of the kpis here the key performance indicators how are you reporting on those actions that are in place um how are you tracking this on a monthly basis half yearly annual basis it's up to you and how are you then using those key performance indicators to improve your operations and see where you can progress further in the future and then lastly for this section is the 360 watch also we will be covering this a bit more in detail later on but this is another point of confusion often uh exactly what this is the 360 watch is a ai based tool that ego ecovirus uses to essentially scrape the internet to find different press releases news cases controversies scandals that may have occurred within the last few years for your company and to see what kind of effect this may have so you can think of for example if there was an oil spill related to your operations or if there was some labor in human rights abuses or misconduct these things can be popped up if they were reported on or if they appeared in any database or trade union reports for example but we will explain that a bit further later on so then moving on um to the answering the questionnaire part so you've done the onboarding now you're answering the questionnaire um and as robert already explained the collection of supporting documentation is essential ecovirus is a proof based rating tool and system this means that you cannot simply just say yes we report on our scope one emissions and igovares will believe you completely no you have to upload valid documentation that is then extensively gone through and analyzed by ikevaris that proves that you do do these actions so that you can get a fair and accurate rating across the board so really each document is carefully analyzed and analyzed and credited on the scorecard and if it is deemed to not be relevant then it will not contribute to your score so then going on further here is as i mentioned before the examples of some different certifications initiatives and labels that you can think of across the different pillars please note this is not an exhaustive list there are thousands of certifications out there depending on your industry depending on your location etc so these are just a little bit to get your brain flowing and to give you some inspiration so again you can see the most popular ones the iso certifications you can also see fsc certification um and so on then moving on how does eco virus rate their documentation so once you have provided this document proof ecovirus then goes through the process to look individually document by document to really rate what kind of a quality of a document it really is and they have a scale for this so you can see here at the bottom with the rather bright orange insufficient it is high risk which means that you'll get very little score for this documentation and ecovitis most likely has found that there are no policies or tangible actions regarding csr so most likely this document is irrelevant for the question that you're using to answer it with and will not likely contribute very much to your score then moving to the opposite end of the spectrum this is where i hope everyone wants to be of course for example advanced this is where policies and tangible actions on major issues are detailed with implementation information available so this is really providing this documentation that states you do something but that also states exactly how this is manifested in your operations and explains and shows ecobotis how you are implementing these different proof of documentation so then here is the expanded explanation on the 360 watch as i mentioned before and like i said it's an ai-based tool that scripts the internet to see any kind of detail any news press release from ngo databases trade unions international organizations like the world bank oecd or even just news reports if something has happened what is interesting to note this ecovirus assesses these findings on an individual basis and that it does occur per pillar so as you can see displayed there are different time limits for which these findings are considered so for environment sustainable procurement labor and human rights findings or um any kind of scandal that pops up for example will only be considered for three years so let's say something happened in 2017 a spill occurred with your company very an accidental spill 2021 you should be good and this should not affect your scoring anymore what is important to note is for ethics this is slightly longer at five years as when you're dealing with cases of corruption and bribery this is usually internalized in management processes of your company and thus uh does take a bit longer to kind of not be considered anymore by ecobodice then moving on to a little bit more we're zooming out again to how ecovatis approaches assessing your csr management system as a whole presented in front of you is a graphic with two axes on the left and on the right hand side starting on the right hand side you can see the two opposite ends being reactive and proactive so starting with reactive this is really where ecovaris looks at your documentation and your approach to sustainability and being reactive means that you're simply just being compliant with legal requirements for example or national legislation you're essentially just taking the box that you need to to move forward which of course it's fine but uh related to nexio's mission of course we're trying to move um from compliant to purpose driven and i think this graphic is very illustrative of this fact so then on the opposite side you have proactive so this is really where companies are going an extra step going beyond the strict legal requirements and starting to do extra reporting they're doing a bit more voluntary initiatives so if we move to the right-hand side of the graph the left-hand side of the graphics sorry you can see the voluntary basis so this is where you are going for those iso certifications you're investing a little bit more of resources and time into that you're reporting based off of gri standards for example and you're really embedding sustainability more so into your strategy and not just complying uh two laws and this is of course viewed as very valuable for eco virus then moving on to the next step of the process once you have then submitted all of your documentation and you click that submit button which can often be very scary wondering if you have everything included or not it then goes into the ecovertis expert's hands where they then conduct their in-depth analysis on a document by a document basis and then to just recap a little bit based off of that once they do start conducting their analysis it is a multi-prospective approach where they not only consider your own internal policies actions and results as i explained before but they also really take external stakeholder interaction into account so you can think of the 360 watch as i mentioned you can see if you have any collaborations with ngos contributing to the community around you do your employees are they present in trade unions what kind of audits have you conducted do you have worker voice surveys these kind of external or third-party aspects are also indeed included in the validation process and then once this whole process has been completed you then are presented with a scorecard of course this is what we will be then moving on to next um the results are often as confusing to clients as the process itself because it's a very detailed process with many documents a lot of proof provided so the the scorecard itself is very detailed as well and then we need to help you understand exactly what you're looking at so you can best and most efficiently use the results moving forward yes and then with that before we dive into that we would like to launch another poll um so i believe you should be seeing the poll in front of you and this one is which theme of the assessment do you find most challenging so again please feel free to answer away and we will share the results with you afterwards again it seems that everyone is still very engaged so thank you very much for the fast responses we will just give a few more seconds we're already at 60 answered and it's only been 10 seconds or so robert that's uh that's a great herman and i think this is uh this is all a very good and and as you all know so we we take out another four the first three steps of the ecovirus model so the onboarding entering questionnaire expert analysis and now this is the final pull before we dive dive into the fourth phase of the ecovirus model and it's more your final rating and scorecard but maybe uh before we dive into that hermann you can share the results very curious i must say yes exactly thank you robert so now you should be seeing the results of the poll on your screen and uh very interesting to see that sustainable procurement is by far the majority at 48 of the challenging um followed by labor and human rights that's quite interesting don't you think robert it is very interesting though and i think having uh having these results um maybe also framing that towards the um towards the next slides where we deep dive to more into the scorecard where you also see the different weights in correlation with with these results that you can make the link their hermann for sure thank you so much so thank you for everyone's participation again and now we're getting to the final step which is understanding the results as we have mentioned so now really you have done the ecovaris process congratulations you have been awarded a medal hopefully uh to your satisfaction and then you are presented with a scorecard in front of you so there's a lot going on so let's just break it down step by step um as you can see once you open the ecovatis platform you will then have a few different tabs currently we have this sample and i would like to note that this is an embed the scorecard of an imaginary company so not a real example it is just made up numbers for the purpose of this webinar so you can see here in the scorecard tab we first have your overall score tab which is out of 100 this company has achieved a 58 which also corresponds to the color coding you can see just above the numbers which means that csr performance has been confirmed and that how there has been detected csr policies actions and reporting in place so you may be wondering what are the black lines that are present on these different scales and this is really the average industry score so as robert explained earlier it's not only just a score for your own performance but it's ecovadas also benchmarks your company against other companies who have completed the ecovaris assessment within your industry and please note that this can vary so for some industries many companies do the ecovas assessment there may be 500 whereas for others your sample size will be a bit smaller but nonetheless you are still benchmarked against them so you can see here that this company is performing above the industry score so of course that is very positive to notice then it also breaks it down pillar by pillar so you can start here with environment which is the highest score at 70 out of 100 which is very good and far above the industry average and then you can see the other values of 50 60 and 50 respectively for the other pillars and as robert mentioned before important to note as well is underneath these scores uh for each pillar it's the weighting so each pillar has a weight determined by ecovatis where um it really determines which pillar is most relevant for your organization based off of the industry your size and where you operate your location so here you can see the most uh the one with four dots as a waiting so the highest waiting is labor and human rights followed by environment and then ethics and sustainable procurement so what is important to note here is that while labor and human rights may have the highest weighting and thus will likely have the highest impact on your score it doesn't mean that you should just ignore ethics and sustainable procurement for example they all still contribute and let's say in a very extreme example and probably unrealistic if you focus all of your time energy and resources into labor and human rights but have completely no proof for ethics this of course will not reflect positively on your score so really you should be focusing across the board but this is really just a guiding um indication from ecovas to show you in your industry what is the most important pillar based off of the kind of operations that you conduct so then once you dive a bit deeper you can click on each one of the pillars and then it will give you a per pillar breakdown as you can see here it gives you a little drop box so we are looking at the environmental pillar here and per pillar it then goes strengths improvement areas and the 360 watch findings which we would hope will be zero of course but here you can see there is one so then to look at the strengths ecovirus breaks it down based off of the three aspects i mentioned and explained earlier policies actions and not seen on the screen but if you would scroll down on the screenshot would be reporting so to just give you in a bit of an example ecovatus assessed this imaginary company and found that one of its strengths in the environmental pillar would be that it is a united nations global compact signatory so that is one of those commitments that i talked about earlier so this was deemed as a very positive benefit and would give a plus to your score in the action section for example it also was found that this imaginary company had iso 14001 certification so this is another example of an action that would positively contribute to the score and would be marked as a strength something that is important to note however is just because the you may have scored a strength in this year's assessment for example does not mean that it will necessarily be interpreted as a strength in the future assessments so there are many ways that this can happen maybe the most simple example is perhaps let's say you have an iso 14001 certification but it expires in 2022 and you aim to do an ecovatic assessment end of 2022 then what was a strength before will not be considered a strength as a certification is expired if you use that same proof of certification of course if you recertify then you should be all good that's just a small example then if you move on to the next tab the improvement areas so really this is where ecovodas is identified you need solid improvement on there are gaps based on your documentation that you provided and this is classified according from high medium and low importance or priority something to just be careful of is that a low priority does not necessarily mean that you can just leave it be it is also the consideration of what is complex for you to implement what is complex for you to change so a low priority example here is at the bottom of the screen you can see that ecovirus found no declaration of discrimination harassment no supporting documentation available so really this would be perhaps that you just didn't attach the correct documentation if you have it in place it would be as simple as attaching the correct documentation so that would be quite an easy fix if you have those in place already a high priority might be something that's a bit more complex to fix something that's a bit more long-term but will have a possibly greater impact on your scoring for ecovirus and then hopefully that has clarified that a little bit um and now we would like to launch another poll very quickly um so please bear with us and again contribute engage let us see what you think [Music] i'm very happy to see that although it's nearing the end of the webinar it's still coming in as as quickly as the beginning so thank you very much perfect i think that should be good i will just quickly end the pool so there you have the results the highest value being 49 on how to improve my score is the thing that the majority of you want to learn more about i think this is most common isn't it robert it is the most common indeed and we are also going to deep dive a little bit more in the next slides uh how we as the certified partner of ecovillus can support with that but also before we do that we dive uh into the medals and we have a a new announcement on it as well yeah i will then move to the next slide yeah [Music] perfect thank you herman as you see here the the eco file eco various metals that you can obtain as a company so as we said in the beginning and a couple of times your sustainability performance is reflected in a score and if you score before below 45 or 47 you do not have a have a medal but you still have your score card with your um score per pillar uh you are still being mentioned et cetera et cetera but you do not um you didn't obtain a medal as a company you see two lines because from the first of january 2022 onwards so 13 days ago ecovaris announced that they have changed the scoring with regards to the medals so before bronze started at 45 and now 47 same for silver obviously you can see it's 54 now 56 gold was 66 now 67 and platinum from 73 to 75 ecovalles has uh has announced it only two weeks ago so this is uh possibly pretty new to a lot of you who are seeing this for the first time but absolutely good to be aware of this obviously with regards to client requests and maybe the goal for for the upcoming year a good note obviously is that your current metal is not changing if for example you have obtained in 2021 a silver medal at 54 you can still keep the silver medal until your score is not valid anymore and it will not of course change to a bronze medal then but from 2020 to onwards the score of 54 is then bronze so just wanted to to show you the the new metal structure of eco virus and how this is going to look like from 2022 onwards uh where the last change was in 2020 this time in 2022 so maybe however we see a pattern near that maybe every two years ego valley is ecovilis is going to raise the standards um but let's see for for the next years but from from this year onwards the standards are a little higher than than for the last two years so deep dive a little a little bit more on how we can support you as nexio projects obviously we just saw in the poll reflected that a lot of you are still looking for some specific information on how to uh improve your existing eco virus score as a certified partner of eco virus we help companies two ways on how we can support companies with their eco virus assessments on one hand we help companies with the filling in of their questionnaire to make sure that we aim for the highest possible result we do this by full support options to support with data collection filling in the questionnaire making sure the right documents are linked to the right questions filling in the comment boxes submit your equal values assessment and even when your equal value score uh came back from the equal values analyst we will deep dive into the scorecard together with you where the first improvement areas are lying on the other hand with regards to the filling in we also do final checks so for example if you say as a company we know how to fill in and to gather the data from our site but we would just like to have a final check from a certified ecovirus partner you can also do a final check before you submit your yearly assessment again on the other hand we also work with companies who just got their eco virus score back and are not per se satisfied with the scorecard on that sense we do esg gap analysis where we help companies with clarifying the feedback from ecovaris uh screening the ecovillage scorecard looking to the feedback from igovalus look into the documents the policies the procedures the trainings all the types of evidences that you have uploaded in the platform and how can we make an uh how can we identify the different gaps in your sustainability management system to work towards improvement and after identifying those gaps we even have an implementation team where hermann is also part of where we can implement the identified gaps from the first phase and obviously as you can see on the on the right side we also have a sustainability training program um where we can train your team for example who is filling in the eco files assessment on a yearly basis just as a side note besides the eco files support nexio projects also supports on uh climate related projects as you can see but also more on the reporting side obviously it's january uh reporting season where we also support companies with their sustainability and report for example and we can we can move to the next slide before we we move towards the live q a where i see we already have 30 questions hermann so i think we can better also looking a little bit keeping in mind the time we can move towards the q a but just before we jump into the q a we just want to do one more poll if there are any specific services um where you are looking for as a company already in the coming months uh this is the moment to to let us know obviously where we can potentially support you with in 2022 um so as i said this is an eco-files assessment review so more final review before submitting the the gap analysis as i explained with clarifying your corrective actions um identifying the gaps in your sustainability management system to work towards improvements full equal virus assessment support or maybe carbon services from our former climate team um how are we doing with the answer sermon yeah they're coming in just as fast so thank you again guys for the participation i will give it a good ten more seconds before we can move on so we can answer some of your very important questions and hopefully clarify any uh gaps or misunderstandings and i think that is good thank you very much for answering the poll we won't be sharing these this is as robert has said just for our own education how we can perhaps be of service to all of you so thank you very much and then we will move on to the live q a yes so i will then stop sharing my screen yeah yeah that's totally fine all right i see still that there were a couple of questions also in the chat box by the way i've messaged a couple of times to please upload the questions in the in the q a book so if you have not done that yet please transfer your uh questions from the chat box to the q a box so that herman and myself can also answer your questions in that sense um maybe your first question um from eureka my question concerns requests from other parties to see our scorecard why is it automatically approved if i do not do anything wouldn't be better if i don't do anything the request is not accepted it is indeed a new feature in ecovaris that if a company is asking to look into your scorecard it is automatically accepted from an eco files perspective to keep the sustainability part as transparent as possible ecovillus as a2 is already obviously very transparent too where you have to submit evidence from your company to showcase your sustainability performance and this new feature from eco file is indeed aurica automatically gives companies if they request access access to your to your scorecard but you can always on a later point decline the access from your perspective if you would prefer to not share your score on a later point um we look into the next question from derek maybe you want to answer that one herman yes would you mind reading it out while i find it yeah of course it's on the top it's up for the five thumbs up um with so many questions and being evidence based why do you only get to upload a maximum of 55 documents that is a very good question and also a quite a common question that we get and the answer to that derrick is that from ikovaris's perspective that the 55 maximum document limit is exactly there to show that um a company that has sustainability integrated into their strategy into their processes should have it uh as centralized and as consolidated as possible and that in their perspective if a company is strong in sustainability it should be able to prove it in even under less than 55 documents so really the less proof you have in the more consolidated your sustainability strategy the more concise it should be and the less documents you should be uploading perfect i see uh there are also response in the meantime so hopefully that answered your question derek and if it's really a struggle for the company and you're not figuring out how to reduce this company we're also happy to to help you on that one just to check how we can maybe combine certain elements etc to make sure it's aligned with the eco files methodology um i see frank with the with the question that is always in the q a and that is will you be supplying the presentation to all attendants yes our marketing team margarita and anger from our marketing team will make sure that you receive the presentation afterwards so it's coming your way as well um do you want to take on the next question again uh from yahoo herman i don't know if you can see it otherwise i can read it out loud yes so the question from yaron is with limited number of files allowed for uploading how do you propose to overcome this in case you exceed the threshold combine policy procedure actions and kpi files for different company sites and locations this is a very uh good question jiren and it's something that i myself as an analyst encounter very very often and there are a few ways you can approach this really the first one is to kind of discern which documents are really showing the best proof which ones are seeing exactly answering the question exactly what is necessary but at the same time if you really really after going through your documentation cannot narrow it down to underneath the threshold it is indeed possible to merge some of your policies or your procedures especially if they are similar so for example what we see often is for the pillar labor and human rights the health and safety different kind of procedures you have relating specifically to health and safety we do see that in some occasions you can indeed merge these health and safety procedures to then reduce your documentation that you upload drastically but this is not always represented because exactly of the question that i answered previously that the less documentation you provide that speaks more the better so this is really um i wouldn't say last resort but if indeed you cannot cut it down or consolidate it more then you can indeed take that approach to merging thank you very much for your question great thank you everyone i'm scrolling a little bit down so i'm going to pick more the also some other questions obviously one from karen whitten thank you karen for your question is when do they update release new questions um from this year onwards uh new questions are added in most of the questionnaires and every year the questionnaire is updated from an ecofile's perspective but this year specifically there are more questions added for example on the environmental part in almost all the questionnaires for other industries so more on the emissions and also on on science-based targets for example um but um eco values updated the questionnaire beginning of the year so in the last days um let's see let's pick another a couple of questions still herman i see uh also looking at the time obviously yeah perhaps i see one from amy hickman who asks can we see how our submitted documents are rated in the platform indeed you can amy you can see how they are either strengths or improvement areas as i explained before and you can see also how i explained the document rating system documents are also shown when they have been rejected by ecovaris so then you can see okay this document was not accepted and then there will indeed be an indication of why and then you can really use that rejection or even the strengths and improvement areas as i explained before to then tackle your next assessment to see okay what can i improve upon what can i change which documentation can be different next time around great thank you very much i hope that answered your question i see the next question from gabriel which is actually a nice one as well does the 360 analysis takes into account positive findings besides scandals as well and absolutely true so obviously you can in the 360 watch which hermann explained in very detail also positive findings can be detected and have a positive influence on your score as well so for sure good good question gabriella do you maybe want to tackle another question from your side uh man yes let me see if you have one in mind already robert please feel free to shout it out while i scroll yeah yeah i can uh forward one from ellen also great to have you on the on the webinar allen will ecovirus credit us for our kpis that we are not reporting externally i believe yes they will reporting is also considered when it is internal you do not necessarily have to only uh share your external reporting it can really just be that reporting that you have for yourself those uh accident frequencies that you track internally for example for labor and human rights or your number of times your whistleblowing procedure has been used these are the kind of things you don't really always share externally but you do internally and these will 100 percent be considered by ecovatis and will help improve your score if you attach appropriate proof i hope that answers your question thank you and indeed i totally agree um i see maybe one last question looking at the time obviously we also want to respect your time is from tony can we have access to the questionnaire for viewing prior to filling out and completing um like i can tackle the this one unfortunately it's not possible to already look into your questionnaire before um before filling out and completing so when you request the questionnaire from an egovarus perspective directly you will have a number of weeks to complete the questionnaire from your site um i think one of the benefits for example with working with nexio projects is that we can extend your deadline with a couple of weeks if you would need some extra time um but unfortunately it's not possible to for example now request your ecovirus questionnaire and only submit end of summer there's always a certain time frame where you will need to fill in the assessment but thank you for your question tony um i see still herman that we have 33 questions um but we also want to respect your time um something from my perspective what i'm gonna do is uh um come back to you with the with the ones with still an open question um where i can still uh discuss your case a little bit more in depth and i will also post my uh meeting link in the chat box so if any of you would like to have an uh more deep dive discussion on your sustainability case on your eco values assessment scorecard or is looking for specific support already please don't hesitate to use the link to already plan a meeting with me where we can discuss your case a little bit more in depth but for the rest i want to say thank you again for joining it was an absolute pleasure from our side to host this webinar again i hope the the webinar was insightful for you um that we could have answered your questions and otherwise we will definitely come back to you to still have that discussion on your on your on your question but from my side um very grateful to have you on the webinar again and uh hopefully see you uh see you on the next one yeah and completely echoing that as well thank you so much for everyone's active participation and engagement we hope to keep in discussion keep in touch if you need anything please reach out to robert and thank you so much for your attendant attendance everyone and have a good rest of your day