Telling Your Sustainability Story

Executive Summary

The Conference Board convened a working group involving over 300 executives from 150 companies to discuss how companies can tell their sustainability stories authentically, reliably, and effectively to multiple constituencies. This overview captures the insights, guidance, and best practices from the working group sessions. Additional details can be found in the four accompanying Practical Guides.

 Companies face a number of challenges in telling their sustainability stories: 1) deciding what issues are truly important to disclose to convey a clear, cohesive, authentic, and distinctive story about the company; 2) maintaining consistency, ensuring that their story effectively addresses the interests of multiple stakeholders; 3) providing information that’s not only accurate and reliable, but genuinely trusted (including during crises); and 4) managing the ever-evolving—and often frustrating—landscape of sustainability regulations, reporting frameworks, and ESG rating firms—as well as the growing demands by business partners who have their own requests for sustainability-related information.

To tackle some of these challenges, The Conference Board convened a working group of over 300 executives from more than 150 companies who met over the span of 10 months to focus on how companies can tell their sustainability stories authentically, reliably, and effectively to multiple constituencies.[1] Some members of this working group also responded to surveys. This report captures the key insights from the working group sessions as well as the survey results. More detailed guidance can be found in the four accompanying practical guides.