Your customer sends a sustainability questionnaire. Where do you start?

There is a questionnaire on your desk. A large customer wants to know how much CO2 you emit, how you treat employees and what your suppliers do. The deadline is in three weeks, and you have no sustainability department. Many SMEs get a list like this. This is how we tackle it with them.

We read the whole list first

Go through the questions and put them in three groups. The first holds questions you can answer straight away. The second holds questions where you need to look something up. The third holds what you cannot answer. It helps to see how big each group is. Often it is not too bad.

Ask what your customer really needs

Is your customer covered by the European reporting rules, the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD)? Then for its report it may not ask much more than the VSME, a voluntary standard for smaller companies. The exact rules are still to come. If a question goes much further, call your contact and ask what they need it for. Often it turns out to be less than the list.

Gather your figures

Many answers are already in your records. Think of the energy bills for electricity and gas, and the fuel cards for your vehicles. Sick leave and accidents are in your HR records. And the invoices from your biggest suppliers also say a lot.

Write down where each figure comes from. Then you can repeat it next year, and your customer can check it if they ask more.

‘We don’t know this yet, we will measure it from January’ is a good answer. A customer trusts that more than a guess. A wrong figure that has to be corrected later does more harm to the relationship.

If the customer asks about your own suppliers, you often have little view of that. Then say what you do know, for example who you buy the most from.

Keep the work

The next customer sends a different format, but the questions look alike. So keep your answers in one document, with the source next to each. Also record how you made the figures. Then the knowledge isn’t lost when the colleague who did it leaves.

A well-answered list shows you are a reliable partner. That helps when you bid alongside bigger suppliers. For a family business it also shows what you have done for years for your people and the region.

If you belong to an industry association, ask whether it has a shared format. Then members only need to fill in the basics once. Do you work at an industry association yourself? Then a shared format based on the VSME saves your members a lot of work.

Would you like us to take a look? With a list and a deadline, that usually starts with Rapid response, our help when it can’t wait.