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The Engagé RSE label, the first step towards CSRD

AFNOR Certification has published a white paper explaining how the Engagé RSE label helps you prepare the sustainability report required of companies under the European CSRD directive. Committed companies, you're already involved in extra-financial reporting without even knowing it!

Published on 24/10/2023, updated 01/08/2024 à 16:04 Reading time : 3 minutes

By 2025, companies with more than 250 employees will have to report on their non-financial performance with the same rigor as their financial performance: in the form of an annual report combining standardized indicators and audited by an independent expert. This is the aim of the CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive), which calls for a first report in 2025 based on 2024 data.

The aim of such reporting is not so much to collect figures as to encourage the producers of figures to improve their practices and strategies on the major themes covered by these figures, i.e. subjects in the ESG sphere (environment, social, governance). All this, with the guarantee that the data will be comparable from one year to the next and from one player to the next, since the range of indicators required is standardized: the directive calls for the use of the brand-new ESRS standards.

Committed to CSR: ESG data collection process already in place

Improving practices… This is something that speaks to companies already engaged in a CSR labeling process. The Engagé RSE label and the voluntary ISO 26000 standard on which it is based are clearly tools that facilitate sustainability reporting,” asserts Mélodie Merenda, a specialist in the subject for the AFNOR group. In fact, both require processes for identifying, collecting and reporting precise CSR data, on common thematic perimeters, with the glasses of double materiality. ”

The scoring approach specific to the Engagé RSE label serves the CSRD method in that it allows us to report, theme by theme, information relating to strategy, governance, deployment of actions and measurement of results. A new white paper from AFNOR Certification, which can be downloaded free of charge here, formalizes these methodological and thematic bridges, and provides CSR managers with the operational keys they need to prepare for sustainability reporting. If you are that CSR manager, you can also watch the replay of the presentation conference on October 12, 2023.
AFNOR Compétences is your partner in this area.

correspondence grid between ESRS and ISO 26000 standards

The document reveals a correspondence grid between each of the ESRS standards and the 7 chapters of the ISO 26000 standard, as well as the 50 criteria of the Engagé RSE label: premade work! ” The Engagé RSE label gives as much weight in the final score to the chapters on measuring CSR performance as to the other five chapters assessing the company’s CSR practices. But that’s the whole point of the CSRD and ESRS standards: to encourage companies to set CSR objectives that meet today’s challenges, by giving themselves the means to achieve their ambitions, and to avoid a gap between strategy and results. “it reads.

The document will also be useful for SMEs: those who have chosen to apply for the Engagé RSE label will be ahead of the game, ready for the day when sustainability reporting will fully concern them. For the moment, only listed SMEs are subject to this requirement, starting in 2027 for the 2026 financial year.