ESG Assessment MethodologyContinuous Rating and Best-in-Class
The rating process is used to provide a comparison between companies performance within sectors, countries or market capitalisation.
This process is based on the following method:
| Score | Percentage | Company Ranking |
| ++ | Highest 5% | Significantly above average |
| + | Next highest 25% | Above average |
| = | Middle 40% | Average |
| - | Next lowest 25% | Below average |
| -- | Lowest 5% | Significantly below average |
Collecting the Information
Information is collected from:
- Publicly available sources
- The OWW ResponsibilityTM Questionnaire
- Direct engagement with the company and its managers
- Monitoring of company web-sites and reports
- Monitoring of media and industry sources to identify positive and negative reports
Accommodating Different Management Styles
Different companies have different ways in which they fulfil their social responsibilities and so our emphasis is on demonstrable outcomes rather than conformity to particular management techniques. Companies are not penalised for adopting different practices if they can show that the outcome is as good or better as the criteria we assess in our standard questionnaire.
Outputs
The OWW ResponsibilityTM Ratings system is used to provide summary reports or full-scale assessments and comparative analyses within and across sectors. The summary reports provide the following information:
- An overview of the company's main businesses, markets and activities
- A financial summary and recent share price performance compared to the benchmark and the OWW SRI Index Series
- A CSR/SRI scorecard
- Observations on the quality of the CSR information available and how it has been reported
- CSR highlights
- Sources and methods
A full scale CSR assessment is an audit of CSR practice to be used by companies for internal policy development purposes. It provides:
- Executive summary
- CSR assessment scorecard
- Observations on CSR practice and reporting
- Gap analysis and benchmarking: summary and rationale
- Gap analysis and benchmarking: comparative information availability
- Detailed breakdown of CSR assessment
- Recommendations
- Methods and sources
