Ecovadis - Anyone with any experience please?

[MrBig]

I've been given the joyous task of improving our Ecovadis score this year. Somewhat challenging for a SME in my opinion, but giving it a go.

Does anyone have any experience of this and would be prepared to answer some (potentially stupid) questions please?

[Mr Overheads]

We specialise in Measurement and reduction of Carbon (so some of ESG and we partner with other consultancies that can do more of the non-Carbon, non-Energy stuff like community engagement policies, staff treatment etc etc.

Happy to have a chat.

[MrBig]

Thanks, very kind of you. Unfortunately, my questions mostly revolve around the EcoVadis process, and how documents/policies are assessed.

[mattybrown]

MrBig said:

I've been given the joyous task of improving our Ecovadis score this year. Somewhat challenging for a SME in my opinion, but giving it a go.

Does anyone have any experience of this and would be prepared to answer some (potentially stupid) questions please?

We currently have a silver rating with Ecovadis. I do not do the entry myself, however I do have some knowledge.

We are on our third year and the most infuriating thing is they will dismiss documents such as qualifications of individuals if they do not have the company name on them, e.g we have several people with sustainability qualifications (Board Directors) from Cambridge but these are rejected due to apparently no link to the company, so we now watermark every document we upload. This was also the experience of others who recently sat on a training session held by one of our clients and they also suggested watermarking everything.

We are an SME and we also hire a consultant to help with the entry as well, which obviously there is a cost for this.

You are probably aware that Ecovadis moved the grade boundaries last year and yes not in the favourable way.

[MrBig]

mattybrown said:

We currently have a silver rating with Ecovadis. I do not do the entry myself, however I do have some knowledge.

We are on our third year and the most infuriating thing is they will dismiss documents such as qualifications of individuals if they do not have the company name on them, e.g we have several people with sustainability qualifications (Board Directors) from Cambridge but these are rejected due to apparently no link to the company, so we now watermark every document we upload. This was also the experience of others who recently sat on a training session held by one of our clients and they also suggested watermarking everything.

We are an SME and we also hire a consultant to help with the entry as well, which obviously there is a cost for this.

You are probably aware that Ecovadis moved the grade boundaries last year and yes not in the favourable way.

That's really good to know, thank you. I can't believe how difficult it is to find out basic information. For example, once you pay the fee to be re-evaluated, how long do you have to complete the questionnaire? I can't even figure out how to link documents to the questionnaire (although, I haven't requested the re-evaluation yes as I'm still collating documents). All I've got currently is access to the list of measures we need to improve on, the documents already submitted and a print out of last years questionnaire completed by someone else!