Value
First, you must consider how positive or negative the impact of the company is on the planet and society based on what is described in the impact analysis.
The range goes from strongly negative to strongly positive.
When rating the value of the impact described, think about the absolute impact of the company.
For example:
Is it bad or very bad to use forced labour in a supply chain, pollute water bodies, or sell cigarettes?
Is it good or very good to support SMEs, create jobs, or produce electric cars?
🚨 A few things to note:
Assessing the value of the impact is subjective (ie, there is no right or wrong answer; the value is based on your judgement).
The value is rated based on a topic rather than a company. For example, the greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of an oil and gas company versus a pharmaceutical company have the same value). It is the materiality that will be company-specific.
The value does not take into account how “small” or “big” the impact is for a company. In consequence, two companies should get the same value for, say, GHG emissions, while the materiality should take care of the fact that in one case, the impact is negligible while it is big in the other one.
Finally, remember when you are rating an analysis, you should only take into account the topic addressed, and not the other impacts of the company which are treated in different analyses. For example, when assessing the impact of a pharmaceutical company on human health, you should not rate taking into consideration the waste the company contributes to with its medicine; this will be addressed in a different analysis.
