Are you already reporting in line with the United Nations Global Compact or starting to think about becoming a UNGC Participant?
No matter the case, you should know that the UNGC Communication on Progress process is changing from 2023 onwards and undergoing a complete revamp.
In this article, we cover the most common questions organisations have concerning the 2023 UNGC CoP update.
With over 15.000 signatories spread across 160 countries, the UNGC represents the world’s largest voluntary corporate sustainability initiative.
It brings together organisations of all sizes and sectors, that share the common goal of fostering sustainable development.
By joining the initiative, companies commit to responsible business practices focusing on:
The UNGC Communication on Progress is a reporting requirement for UNGC participating companies.
It aims to communicate organisations' progress in embedding and implementing the Ten Principles of the UNGC and the UN SDGs into their strategy and operations.
Through this report, signatories' organisations keep themselves accountable to stakeholders.
The new Communication on Progress will consist of two main sections:
Organisations will have to communicate their efforts within a standardised ‘Universal Submission Period’ running between the 1st of March and the 30th of June of each year.
Moreover, the ‘non-communication period’ will be reduced from 12 months to 6 months.
This means that if a company fails to submit its CoP Questionnaire by the 30th of June, it will enter a 6-month period (1st of July to 30th of December) in which is publicly labelled as ‘Non-Communicating’ on the UNGC website.
If within this period, the organisation still does not submit its CoP Questionnaire, it will be delisted as a UNGC participant from the 1st of January of the following year.
The online multiple-choice CoP Questionnaire will contain an extensive set of questions that measure and assess a company’s integration and progress on related topics to the Ten Principles and the SDGs.
Consequently, the old narrative report-based methodology will no longer be valid from 2023 onwards.
The full CoP questionnaire is already available for review. We advise taking a look here to prepare and start the data-gathering process.
The standardised questionnaire is broken into 5 main sections being:
The Human Rights section allows companies to select their relevant material topics for disclosure. Additionally, the Environment section contains questions sector-specific questions.
In general, questions relate to:
Organisations will be allowed to provide additional explanations to their answers. Moreover, a few questions will allow the attachment of additional documents (i.e. sustainability report or code of conduct).
Any reporting or performance data that is provided in the questionnaire is expected to be from the company’s most recent data collection period. Ideally, within the past 12 months before the CoP questionnaire Universal Submission Deadline.
The new CoP methodology aims to provide:
In fact, the previous methodology was last reviewed in 2010 and was not reflecting adequately the reporting landscape anymore.
Nevertheless, the UNGC claims that it should take around:
Companies that are already communicating their progress will have their current status (either ‘active’ or ‘non-communicating’) as of 31st December 2022 carried over into 2023.
Once in 2023, all companies will automatically be subject to the Universal Submission Period running between the 1st of March and the 30th of June.
Organisations that have a 2022 due date for the CoP submission, are requested to still produce and submit the CoP report according to the old report-based methodology.
No grace periods will be recognised past the 31st of December 2022. This means that those signatories that fail to submit before the 2022 deadline will be labelled as 'non-communicating' entities. This status will be removed with the submission of the new CoP Questionnaire.
Finally, our recommendations to properly prepare for the new CoP Questionnaire are the following: