Future-Fit and Other Initiatives

How Future-Fit complements other initiatives

We're not here to reinvent the wheel. Insofar as we can, we build on and align with what's already out there. Read on to find out how our work complements other key initiatives.

B Corporations

B Corporations strive to balance profit and purpose. Future-Fit can help them on the journey, by giving them a clear destination to aim for and a way to steer toward it.

Any company may become a Certified B Corporation or "B Corp" by doing three things. First, the company must amend its legal governing documents to require its board of directors to balance profit and purpose. Second, it must achieve a minimum verified score on a questionnaire — the B Impact Assessment — which encompasses a wide range of criteria relating to the company’s impact on its workers, customers, community, and environment. And third, the company must publish a summary of its performance — a B Impact Report — on bcorporation.net.

Every B Corp is seeking to be a force for good in the world. The Future-Fit Business Benchmark can help them live up to that aim, by providing a holistic way to assess the positive and negative impacts of every decision they make.

bcorporation.net

EU Taxonomy

The EU Taxonomy has identified economic activities which can be called "sustainable" for investment purposes. European financial institutions and corporations must report against it and Future-Fit can help them in the process.

The Taxonomy Regulation entered into force on 12 July 2020. It establishes the basis for the EU taxonomy by setting out the 4 overarching conditions that an economic activity has to meet in order to qualify as environmentally sustainable. 

Under the Taxonomy Regulation, the Commission had to come up with the actual list of environmentally sustainable activities by defining technical screening criteria for each environmental objective through delegated and implementing acts.

This initiative has the potential to transform how markets allocate capital, but that is by no means guaranteed. Success of the EU Taxonomy will rely upon the widespread availability of consistent, high-quality data — both to verify an activity’s positive impacts, and to confirm that they do not come at the cost of negative impacts elsewhere.

Future-Fit can play a key role here, by equipping organizations to identify what ‘doing no harm’ means, to manage their impacts holistically, and to disclose relevant details in a concise, comparable way.

ec.europa.eu/info/business-economy-euro/banking-and-finance/sustainable-finance/eu-taxonomy-sustainable-activities_en

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)

The Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) requires companies to report on the impact of corporate activities on the environment and society, and requires the audit (assurance) of reported information.

A broader set of large companies, as well as listed SMEs, will now be required to report on sustainability.

The CSRD replaces the Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD), to encourage more accurate disclosure of sustainability targets and metrics. The CSRD is aligned with the EU Taxonomy Regulation.

The new rules will ensure that investors and other stakeholders have access to the information they need to assess the impact of companies on people and the environment and for investors to assess financial risks and opportunities arising from climate change and other sustainability issues. Finally, reporting costs will be reduced for companies over the medium to long term by harmonising the information to be provided.

The first companies will have to apply the new rules for the first time in the 2024 financial year, for reports published in 2025.

Future-Fit aligns well to CSRD, offering significant help and insight (particularly with regard to material impact risks) for companies who must comply with upcoming CSRD requirements. 

eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32022L2464

Global Reporting Initiative

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) creates and maintains the most widely-used sustainability reporting standards. Future-Fit can help any company which publishes a GRI report to gain more insight from the data it is already collecting.

GRI standards require the collection of hundreds of data-points spanning all major social and environmental issues. Thousands of companies around the world have been gathering these data for many years.

The Future-Fit Business Benchmark's Break-Even Goals define the line in the sand all companies must strive to reach, on issues ranging from greenhouse gas emissions to employee rights. A complementary set of indicators enable any company to monitor its progress toward each goal as a simple percentage.

These progress indicators have been designed specifically to help companies make better day-to-day decisions in key areas such as procurement and product design. And any organization already producing a GRI report is probably already in possession of most of the data needed to calculate them.

globalreporting.org

Science-Based Targets

The Science-Based Target (SBT) initiative helps organizations set the right ambitions to play their part in tackling the climate crisis. Future-Fit can help any such organization monitor and explain its SBT progress and trajectory in a concise, comparable way.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sets out what level of action is needed worldwide to adapt to and mitigate the worst effects of climate change, in particular by defining the "global carbon budget" which must not be exceeded.

Setting SBTs involves a ‘fair share’ approach to dividing up the global carbon budget, so every business will have to step up. Any organization which commits to an SBT should thus be recognized – and Future-Fit supports this by providing a consistent way for all users to explain the extent of and reasons for their GHG elimination commitments, and their progress and plans toward reaching them.

sciencebasedtargets.org

SDGs

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) serve as a global call to action to protect the planet and ensure prosperity for all – and the Future-Fit Business Benchmark helps any business respond holistically to them.

By pursuing future-fitness, all businesses can make credible positive contributions to the SDGs, while simultaneously working to ensure that they aren’t inadvertently undermining progress elsewhere. You can find out more by following the link below.

futurefitbusiness.org/sdgs/

Task-Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures

The TCFD is working to establish consistent, meaningful climate reporting. Future-Fit can play a supporting role here, by helping any business to identify and manage its climate-related challenges in the context of other systemic issues.

For a company to implement the full TCFD guidelines, many key business functions will have to be engaged – and it is hoped that this will lead to greater awareness and action across the organization.

The Future-Fit Business Benchmark can support such engagement, by equipping companies with actionable guidance and a set of progress indicators which can be used to improve understanding and decision-making across an organisation, in areas ranging from procurement to product design.

www.fsb-tcfd.org

Flourishing Business Canvas

The Flourishing Business Canvas is a visual collaborative design tool that enables leaders to co-create the Future-Fit business model of their organization and communicate a shared understanding of what their organization must become in order to be Future-Fit.

The Flourishing Business Canvas prompts leaders to consider the necessary and sufficient social, environmental and economic business model factors required to meet the Future-Fit Break-Even Goals and contribute to the Positive Pursuit Goals. This enables leaders to explore alternative pathways to becoming Future-Fit, whilst exploring all the sources of material risk and opportunity that are emerging.

The Flourishing Business Canvas was rigorously developed over a 10 year period, informed by academic research, with 1000’s of leaders and entrepreneurs in 47 countries applying the canvas to their businesses.

The Flourishing Business Canvas is promoted by a not-for-profit that makes it freely available for use, and convenes an active world-wide community of canvas practitioners.

Download the Canvas from https://www.FlourishingBusiness.org, learn more at https://youTube.com/@FlourishingBiz

www.FlourishingBusiness.org

International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB)

The International Sustainability Standards Board (ISSB) of the IFRS Foundation offers a worldwide standard for companies to reveal financially relevant climate-related information, providing a global reference point.

The ISSB develops—in the public interest—standards that will result in a high-quality, comprehensive global baseline of sustainability disclosures focused on the needs of investors and the financial markets.

The ISSB builds on the work of market-led investor-focused reporting initiatives—including the Climate Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB), the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), the Value Reporting Foundation’s Integrated Reporting Framework and industry-based SASB Standards, as well as the World Economic Forum’s Stakeholder Capitalism Metrics.

The Future-Fit methodology is concerned with extra-financial materiality – what matters at a societal level – and so offers a natural complement to ISSB. This is particularly true for investors seeking to drive systemic change, and for universal owners whose portfolios depend on the continuing good health of the global economy as a whole.

www.ifrs.org/