
The enhanced Communication on Progress
We are excited to announce the launch of a new Communication on Progress (CoP) platform effective in 2023. The enhanced Communication on Progress offers many benefits to business participants.
With the introduction of the enhanced CoP, we will transition from a narrative format to a standardized questionnaire supported by a digital platform. All business participants will be required to disclose their progress using the new platform beginning in 2023.
About the enhanced Communication on Progress
The enhanced CoP enables participating companies of the UN Global Compact to:
- Measure and demonstrate progress to stakeholders and the public on the Ten Principles and the Sustainable Development Goals in a consistent and harmonized way.
- Build credibility and brand value by showing their commitment to the Ten Principles and the Sustainable Development Goals.
- Receive insight, learn and continuously improve performance by identifying gaps, accessing guidance and setting sustainability goals.
- Compare performance against peers with access to one of the largest sources of free, public and comparable corporate sustainability data.
We are also introducing a universal submission period that runs from 1 March through 30 June each year. In 2023, the submission period will start on 27 March.
How the Communication on Progress works
Step 1: Understand your requirements The enhanced Communication on Progress (CoP) consists of two elements: a CEO statement of continued support and a new standardized CoP questionnaire. The CEO statement of continued support publicly expresses your company’s ongoing commitment to the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact at the highest level. The statement is a standardized template that is signed electronically on the new CoP digital platform. The CoP questionnaire focuses on five disclosure areas (governance, human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption) and is designed to help participating companies monitor performance across the Ten Principles. There will be no scoring or ranking associated with the CoP questionnaire. Rather, the objective is to create transparency and enable progress. To fulfill the CoP requirement, your company must have electronically signed the CEO statement of continued support and answered all the questions in the CoP questionnaire via the new CoP digital platform by the end of the universal submission period. Check the CoP questionnaire template here and get more information on the CEO statement of ongoing support here. |
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Step 2: Know your deadlines Companies should complete and submit their CoP during the universal submission period, which takes place from 1 March through 30 June annually, in order to maintain ‘active’ status in the UN Global Compact. If a company fails to complete and submit their CoP during the universal submission period, they will fall into ‘non-communicating’ status, and their name and status will be publicly displayed here. This status can be reverted to ‘active’ by submitting the CoP any time between 1 July and 31 December, annually. If a ‘non-communicating’ company fails to submit their CoP by 31 December, they will be delisted from the UN Global Compact for ‘failure to communicate’ in January of the following calendar year. Delisted companies will be publicly displayed here. With the new CoP, there will be no grace periods or extensions. For more details on the CoP requirements, delisting and rejoining policy, access the CoP policy. |
Step 3: Prepare your report
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Step 4: Complete and submit your CoP
Once you have…
… you are ready to submit your CoP through the digital platform. |
Step 5: Visualize your submitted CoP report Upon submission of the CoP, all companies will be able to view their completed CoP report on their participant profile on the UN Global Compact website, where it will be accessible by any stakeholder and the public as an html web page and downloadable as a PDF. Companies will also be able to visualize their CoP answers, track and understand performance and benchmark against peers through their data visualization dashboard on the CoP digital platform. Please note that all data, including supplemental documentation that was submitted by a participating company through the CoP digital platform, will be made publicly available on the UN Global Compact website. This data may be used by the UN Global Compact in aggregate form to present trends or included in reports about the status of corporate sustainability. The UN Global Compact does not have any responsibility on the accuracy of the data submitted by its participating companies nor on how this public data will be used by other stakeholders. |
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Resources
Access the CoP Academy page for
on-demand sessions and templates
Need Support?
Reach us at cop-support@unglobalcompact.org