Ecovadis Questionnaire

[Quincey Homer]

Videotutorial explaining how to respond to the EcoVadis Sustainability questionnaire. An easy-to-understand explanation for going through the questionnaire, what type of information is relevant and why it is important to upload documents as evidence.

The 'XS Scoring Principles' document provides a brief summary of the EcoVadis methodology, before delving into the characteristics of the analysis and scoring process for XS companies (1-25 Employees)

An EcoVadis ESG-linked supply chain finance program gives your organization the opportunity to manage and track your ESG performance and share it with your corporate buyers and financial institutions.

The first step to receiving an EcoVadis certification is to register on the EcoVadis website. You will be asked to create a company profile, specify your business activity and update your contact information. This information is then used by EcoVadis to build a customized questionnaire for your company based on your industry sector, the country of operations and the size.

If your company was invited to undergo an EcoVadis assessment, you should follow the link in the email invitation. This will allow the requesting company to follow your progress and be notified when your results go live.

Upon entering the platform, you will land on the Dashboard page where you can check the progress you made, the latest news from EcoVadis, and where you can start completing the questionnaire. As mentioned before, the questionnaire is customized to your company, as shown by the example below.

Once you have completed and submitted your questionnaire, appointed EcoVadis experts will analyse your answers and the documents uploaded to check whether your answers are supported by the right documents and respect EcoVadis criteria. The process itself takes approximately 6 to 8 weeks.

Once your answers have been analyzed and results are published, you will be notified via email. Your answer will be distilled into a Scorecard, as shown in the example below. In the Scorecard, you will find:

Beginning 2022, the results are still not impacting your overall EcoVadis score. However, considering the increasing focus and pressure on private sector carbon reduction plans, this might not be the case for very long.

Policies make up 20% of the overall score. As such, it is an important focus area when evaluating your environmental management system. Policies are crucial because they carry your mission, outline your value statements and guide your company towards implementing them. When analysing the quality of your policies, EcoVadis scores as follows:

EcoVadis also looks at the external endorsements (5% of overall score) that the assessed company supports, in order to evaluate commitment and proactivity towards socio-environmental initiatives and industry-specific ambitions. Examples of such endorsements are commitments to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Global Compact, and CDP.

EcoVadis evaluates the actions taken to support objectives set in each of the four pillars (environment, labour, business ethics, sustainable procurement). Measures account for 26% of the overall score and as such, represent the most important category that EcoVadis evaluates. In other words, it forms the backbone of your environmental management system.

Proper reporting demonstrates that a company has set, measured, and monitored relevant key performance indicators (KPIs). It shows that company actions, as formulated in the policies, are oriented towards improvement. Sustainable reporting constitutes 14% of the total points allocated in the EcoVadis score, and is scored as follows:

The EcoVadis assessment being a documentation audit, some essential elements of sustainability management systems can sometimes be left out. However, EcoVadis provides opportunities to contextualise its documents and give additional information:

As the assessment covers a variety of themes, it may be wise to gather multiple people across departments. Ideally, the people gathered have both (1) knowledge in the topic; (2) access to relevant documentation.

Generally speaking, the environmental questions can better be answered by the CSR manager, who is best able to answer topics of waste, GHG emissions, and sustainable consumption among others. In addition, the Labour & Human rights questions can often be best answered by the HR manager who has insights on recruitment policies and working conditions. Naturally, the sustainable procurement can best be tackled by someone in the purchasing team. Finally, the ethics section can be addressed by the IT or compliance department. Other relevant roles include managing directors, or even company owners.

Yes. An EcoVadis medal stays valid for one year. Therefore, if a company wishes to maintain a valid medal, it should be reassessed on a yearly basis. This also comes with the possibility to increase the score, as EcoVadis makes recommendations based on corrective actions, thus orienting organisations towards improvement.

The EcoVadis assessment can be conducted in 8 languages: English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese and Chinese. However, documents can be submitted in all languages, there is no need for translating.

Many companies use sustainability assessments from third-party providers (e.g., SEDEX) to request information, reports and ratings from their suppliers through a standardized process. One of the most widely used and accepted providers is EcoVadis, a company which has assessed over 100,000 companies across the globe.

The challenge of being a supplier within the network of multiple brands and enterprises is the intense workload which comes with answering sustainability assessments such as EcoVadis. In addition to other reporting requests you might receive as a supplier, you are inundated with long questionnaires, to which your current and future partners want you to respond. Even with a designated sustainability task force, processing all EcoVadis questions can be very time consuming, cumbersome and confusing.

As a supplier, your EcoVadis rating can directly impact your business opportunities. An above average score can set you apart from a competitor, and be the reason a customer chooses to partner with you over another company. On the other hand, ignoring an EcoVadis request from your customer or deciding not to complete one, can also be a red flag to a potential customer.

While it can feel like a chore to complete the EcoVadis questionnaire year after year, it is essential to keep up with your customer demands to secure more business. Thus, to remain competitive within the market, it is recommended to look into the requirements of EcoVadis early and find ways to enhance response times.

The questionnaire cannot be answered without the support and evidence of official documents, of which up to 55 can be uploaded. However, the same document can and oftentimes must be used in the response of multiple questions, making the process redundant and time consuming.

With specific questions requiring particular documentation, attention to detail is key, but also tiresome and still mistakes can easily be made due to misunderstanding a question or uploading incompatible documents.

As the length of your EcoVadis questionnaire will vary depending on the size and complexity of your business, as well as your level of sustainability maturity, so will the time required for its completion.

According to EcoVadis, filling out the questionnaire can take anywhere from "a few hours to a few days to complete." However, in reality, it can take several weeks or even months to prepare the responses before you can start filling out the questionnaire.

With finite resources, most companies have limited capacity to complete all questions in adequate time, leading to a lengthy response time. Even if you are a large sustainability team in an established company, communication across different departments to accumulate the necessary documentation is a time-consuming process.

The questionnaire is available via the EcoVadis account and can be downloaded as a PDF. Once the questionnaire is started, the company is permitted a maximum of three weeks to submit. If a company is unable to submit their questionnaire within this period, they can request an extension, which, if granted, incurs additional fees.

The subsequent expert analysis will take 6-8 weeks. The EcoVadis experts utilize international sustainability standards to guide their review, including the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), UN Global Compact and ISO 26000.

After this waiting period, you will receive a sustainability scorecard which can be shared with customers and compared against other companies. Then, time must be dedicated to making improvements in order to see year-over-year company progression and enhanced sustainability practices and ratings.

Some improvements can be tackled right away if, for example, they concern the evidence you provided. Otherwise, you will have 12 months to work on improvements before the process must be completed again.

Each of the categories above structure the questions according to policies, actions and key performance indicators that your company may have in place. So, try to stick to the same structure when preparing your answers.

Verifying evidence manually is time-consuming and error-prone, considering that data constantly changes and the volume of files and documents increases. Without the right solution in place, performing the yearly recurring assessment can seem like a daunting task.

Using software will not only save you time, but also ensure consistent responses. With just a few clicks, you can avoid hours of manual data entry and significantly reduce the risk of errors. Additionally, using automated software ensures your responses are organized in a manner which is easy for the EcoVadis experts to assess, preventing unwanted errors during the analysis.

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