Sustainability reports are getting longer every year. More standards, more metrics, and higher expectations from investors, customers, and regulators. The obvious reaction for many companies is simply to add more content to the sustainability report. Since many reports are now published online anyway and are no longer printed, a large number of pages wouldn’t actually be a problem. But that’s a fallacy. A 120-page report that hardly anyone reads in the end serves its purpose less effectively than a focused, well-structured report with fewer pages.
A recent joint consulting project by Sustainserv and Linkgroup has yielded a methodology for significantly reducing the length of a sustainability report without compromising compliance with standards—in this case, GRI—or sacrificing layout quality.
The starting point: Two types of pages
If you analyze a typical sustainability report more closely, you’ll almost always come across two different types of pages that can also be clearly distinguished visually:
On the one hand, narrative pages, featuring explanatory examples or highlights. These are often peppered with eye-catching background colors, photo galleries, and success stories. They convey key highlights: certifications, awards, selected projects, and employee quotes. These pages are important for public perception, but they are generally not a mandatory component for GRI compliance.
On the other hand, there are formal pages. These include the management approach texts in accordance with GRI 3-3, as well as the corresponding tables of key metrics. These pages form the actual core of GRI reporting and should contain the information required for a GRI report.
The key point: In terms of content, these two types of pages often tell the same story—once in a detailed, narrative format using examples, and once in a concise, tabular format providing an overall overview. It is precisely this redundancy that offers the greatest potential for streamlining.
The central idea: The goals table as a consolidation tool
Many sustainability reports include an overarching table of goals and ambitions at the beginning of the document. Often, however, this table serves only as a rough guide. The respective “ ” columns frequently contain a reference such as “Read more: see the Social chapter,” without providing the actual key message.
The key lies in structurally enhancing this table: Instead of a reference, the condensed metric appears directly in the “Progress” column. This transforms the goals table itself into a compact KPI dashboard that consolidates the key progress statements within just a few pages.
The Four-Step Methodological Approach
1. Create a mapping. Each row of the goals table is linked to the appropriate GRI indicators and the corresponding references in the narrative and formal chapters. This creates transparency regarding where each statement currently stands.
2. Populate the progress column. The specific facts from the narrative chapters are transferred directly into the table—not as a reference, but as a number, percentage, or brief statement. This makes the table readable on its own, without having to flip through the chapters.
3. Radically shorten narrative sections. Once the key messages are listed in the table, example and narrative sections can be made significantly more concise. A multi-page chapter with photo spreads and success stories is condensed into one or perhaps two pages featuring the strongest examples.
4. Keep mandatory GRI pages sufficiently detailed. The management approach texts under GRI 3-3 or, in the case of the (simplified) ESRS, the General Disclosure Requirements (GDRs), as well as the associated key metric tables, offer some leeway for shortening, but only to a limited extent. The company must present the required information and explanations. The key here is to maintain the breadth of coverage without omitting any information. However, you can adjust the level of depth—for example, by varying how detailed the descriptions of policies are—which allows for shorter texts.
Why It’s Worth It
The effect is twofold: The report becomes shorter without omitting any mandatory GRI or ESRS elements. At the same time, readability improves because the central goals table becomes a genuine source of information rather than merely a table of contents with cross-references.
For sustainability managers and CFOs, this is an argument that goes beyond mere aesthetics: a report that is actually used—by investors, customer groups, and the company’s own board of directors. This type of report fulfills its purpose better than one designed primarily to impress with its length. Compliance and brevity are not mutually exclusive; they simply require a conscious decision about which content must truly be included.
Collaboration with Linkgroup and Sustainserv
The collaboration between Linkgroup and Sustainserv combines two perspectives that ideally complement each other in our reporting projects with clients: depth of content and effective communication. Together, we bridge the gap between requirements and implementation:
Sustainserv contributes strategic, regulatory, and content expertise: sustainability strategy, regulatory readiness, materiality analysis, ESRS-compliant text development, governance, data requirements, and auditability.
Linkgroup handles the communication, design, and implementation aspects: report architecture, storyline, layout, digital publication, production processes, and communicative impact. It develops the design concept and translates complex content into a clear, accessible visual language that aids understanding.
Driven by a shared understanding of quality, this creates an integrated process in which content and design are conceived not sequentially but in tandem—resulting in a report that is substantively rich and communicates with precision.
Where do you stand on the path to a report that balances compliance and readability? If you’re ready to take the next step, talk to us. We’d be happy to provide an initial assessment.
Get in touch. We are happy to tell you more about it.
