July 18, 2025
In today’s polarized environment, sustainability communications feel riskier than ever. Companies are softening language, delaying reports or going silent altogether. The shift is noticeable and has many leaders questioning how to move forward.
Bloomberg recently reported that a number of well-known companies have pushed back their typically report publication date. In the same article, the CEO of JUST Capital stated that 25% of sustainability-related corporate reporting is behind schedule this year.
Despite political noise and shifting narratives, we know silence is not a strategy.
Stakeholders still expect meaningful action and communication around sustainability. It may seem easier to stay quiet, but now is the time to recalibrate your strategy.
Here are five considerations as you balance the risks and opportunities and chart your path forward.
- Let materiality guide your story.
Now more than ever, your materiality assessment should drive your disclosures. As more companies move to double materiality to meet regulatory requirements, this assessment takes financial risk into account and helps support the business case for sustainability initiatives. The stakeholder-driven process provides a clear picture of your risks and opportunities. Stay true to these topics and use them as your reporting guide; this offers a credible and defensible foundation for your communications. - Reframe your message to what matters—business value.
Drawing clear connection and alignment between your sustainability efforts and your business strategy is another way to convey credibility and rational thinking in your communications. How do your initiatives support your company’s efforts to grow, retain talent, be more efficient or optimize cost? Connect the dots for your stakeholders and highlight your value and impact. - Demonstrate maturity and transparency in your sustainability journey.
Sustainability is not new, and many companies have been on their journey for a while. If it’s true for you, your communications should reflect this maturity, which will help build trust, demonstrate transparency and reinforce your company’s commitments. As your company gets smarter about sustainability, so do your stakeholders. Ground your communications in tangible progress, clear data, realistic goals and impactful initiatives. - Streamline and simplify your sustainability report.
Your report can’t be everything to everyone—and it will get more complicated to do everything in one document if pending regulations come to full implementation. Focus on one or two key audiences and leverage other channels and materials to communicate with the rest of your stakeholder groups. Staying committed to this targeted approach will help with streamlining content, simplifying the process and reducing the length of your report. It should also make your reporting and your overall program more sustainable for the long term, which is the point, right? - Directly engage with your stakeholders.
Direct engagement with your key stakeholders helps you understand how they want to be communicated to, what’s important to them and why. This feedback loop can help inform your communications strategy and provide rationale to your internal team about what to disclose. It also creates a dialogue around clarity and transparency while learning from each other. Ensure you consider the expectations of global stakeholders because while there may be a lot of pullback and volatility in the U.S., that is not the case everywhere.
Political cycles may wax and wane, and now is the time to recalibrate, not retreat. Companies have an opportunity to shape a strategy that’s clear, credible and consistent with who you are. As we all continue to strike the right balance among mitigating risk, meeting stakeholder expectations and simply doing the right thing, focus on your long-term strategy and how communications can support it.
Want to hear more about how companies are navigating the current sustainability communications environment? Send me a note and let’s connect.
