26 General Issue Categories

ISEAL’s Codes of Good Practice provide a globally recognised framework, defining practices for effective and credible sustainability systems.

User this resource to:

• Define how a standard should be developed, structured and improved over time. The Code addresses multi-stakeholder consultation and decision-making, and ensures the standard contains clear requirements that can be measured and assessed.
• Provide a framework for assessing compliance with standards, so that consumers, supply chain partners, investors and other stakeholders know they can trust the results of assessments. It encourages assurance that is rigorous and accessible, providing accurate and transparent results.
• Support robust monitoring and evaluation that helps systems to understand how effective their standards are in achieving what they set out to do. It provides standards with a roadmap to measure progress against sustainability goals and to improve practices over time.

The Credibility Principles define the core values of credible and effective sustainability systems. They provide the foundations for systems to deliver greater impact.

User this resource to:

• Develop standards and similar sustainability tools to understand which attributes of their system are critical to the credibility of their approach, and why this matters for improving sustainability performance and delivering impacts.
• Identify systems that can be effective partners in delivering against shared sustainability objectives.

Reporting standards that provide industry-specific disclosure topics and associated metrics that measure performance against 26 General Issue Categories (or sustainability topics). Management or mismanagement of performance on these sustainability topics may create, preserve or erode value for the typical company in a given industry over time.

Use this resource to:

• Identify: Understand whether a given topic is reasonably likely to materially affect the financial condition, operating performance, or risk profile of a typical company within an industry. Find industry-specific topics and accounting metrics. The standards themselves provide guidance on selecting metrics to report. Using standardised metrics helps the organisation and its stakeholders compare performance with others.
• Communicate: Report to providers of financial capital on sustainability topics that are likely to affect how value is created, sustained or eroded for the organisation over the short-, medium-, and long-term.

A visual and interactive tool to explore SASB’s disclosure topics across its industries and sectors.

User this resource to:

• Identify: Identify industry-specific disclosure topics and associated metrics. SASB’s research process identifies the subset of environmental, social, and governance issues reasonably likely to materially impact financial performance of the typical company in an industry