EcoVadis Assessment Guide (2025): Process & Document Tips

If you've just been asked by a customer to complete an EcoVadis assessment, you're in the right place. The process can seem complex, but I designed this guide to demystify it completely. I will walk you through the entire journey, step-by-step.

You'll learn:

• The EcoVadis methodology and scoring system.
• Which documents and evidence you need to collect.
• How to interpret your scorecard and plan for improvements.

This guide provides the framework for a confident submission. Let's get started.

Quick Navigation

• 1. Why Should My Business Care About EcoVadis?
• 2. How Does the EcoVadis Assessment Framework Actually Work?
• 3. What Are the Four Sustainability Themes EcoVadis Assesses?
• 4. What Are the 7 Management Indicators EcoVadis Uses for Scoring?
• 5. How to Improve Your EcoVadis Score
• 6. What's the Best Way to Share My EcoVadis Results?
• 7. Frequently Asked Questions
• 8. Need Expert Guidance?

1. Why Should My Business Care About EcoVadis?

First, let's be clear: pursuing sustainability isn't just about compliance; it's about creating tangible business value. A strong EcoVadis score is one piece of evidence to support your claim of being a resilient, well-managed company, which directly impacts your bottom line by reducing downsides and increasing upsides.

Depending on your ambition, a strategic approach to sustainability allows you to:

• Increase Revenue: By differentiating your products, innovating new technologies, and enhancing your brand reputation to win more market share.
• Improve Margins: Through higher staff motivation and retention, stronger pricing power, and significant cost savings from operational efficiencies.
• Reduce Risk: By securing your supply chain, lowering regulatory and legal risks, and protecting your company's reputation and social license to operate.
• Lower Capital Costs: By demonstrating lower market and operational risks, which creates opportunities for greater access to and lower costs of capital, financing, and insurance.

In today's market, those who leverage sustainability and achieve strong EcoVadis scores steer towards innovation and success. Those who ignore it are choosing the path of diminishing returns.

2. How Does the EcoVadis Assessment Framework Actually Work?

EcoVadis is a globally recognised provider of business sustainability ratings. Founded in 2007, its platform assesses your company's environmental, social, and ethical management systems and, depending on your industry, your company's procurement practices. The result is a scorecard from 0-100 that gives you, and your customers, clear insight into the maturity of your sustainability practices.

The entire scoring methodology is built on international standards like the GRI Standards and the UN Global Compact, ensuring the assessment is consistent and credible.

🔍 Want a deeper dive into how scoring works?
Read: EcoVadis Methodology Explained – The P-A-R Framework & 7 Management Indicators

How Does EcoVadis Compare to B Corp and CDP?

It's common to wonder how EcoVadis differs from other platforms. While all three are valuable, they serve different primary roles. Here’s how to think about it:

Now that you understand its role, let's look at what EcoVadis actually assesses.

3. What Are the Four Sustainability Themes EcoVadis Assesses?

Your EcoVadis assessment is structured around four fundamental sustainability themes. For each theme, you will be evaluated on your company's Policies, Actions, and Results (P-A-R).

Environment

This theme assesses your environmental management system, covering policies and performance on issues like energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions, water usage, waste management, and pollution.
For a detailed guide, see How to Improve Your Environment Score.

Labour & Human Rights

This covers your management of human capital, including health & safety, working conditions, social dialogue, career management, training, diversity, and fundamental human rights principles like the prohibition of child labour.
For a detailed guide, see How to Improve Your Labour & Human Rights Score.

Ethics

This theme evaluates your policies and actions on business ethics. It includes topics like preventing corruption, responsible information management, data privacy, and ensuring fair business practices.
For a detailed checklist, read the post EcoVadis Ethics Upload Checklist.

Sustainable Procurement

This assesses how you manage sustainability within your own supply chain. It looks at your policies for supplier screening, the inclusion of environmental and social clauses in contracts, and your actions to promote sustainability among your suppliers.
For a detailed guide, see How to Improve Your Sustainable Procurement Score.

4. What Are the 7 Management Indicators EcoVadis Uses for Scoring?

To assess the maturity of your sustainability management system, EcoVadis evaluates your evidence across seven key indicators. Understanding these is crucial to knowing what to provide.

5. How to Improve Your EcoVadis Score

Receiving your first EcoVadis scorecard is not the end of the process; it's the beginning of your improvement journey. The scorecard provides a snapshot of your maturity and performance while simultaneously acting as a roadmap. Here’s how to read it and take action. 

How Do I Read and Understand My EcoVadis Scorecard?

Your overall EcoVadis score ranges from 0-100. Based on this score, you may be awarded a medal or a badge. It's important to know that medals are awarded based on your company's percentile rank against all other companies assessed in the last 12 months, so the exact score required can change year to year. As of early 2025, here are the performance levels:

While the overall score gives you a quick sense of your position, the real value lies in the details of each theme.

How Should I Prioritise Actions to Improve My Score?

Prioritise your efforts by focusing on low-scoring themes. Your scorecard will break down your performance across the four themes. These themes are weighted differently based on your industry's risk profile. For example, a manufacturing company will have a higher weight on the Environment theme, while a services firm may have a higher weight on Labour & Human Rights.

Focus your energy on strengthening the themes with the lowest scores, especially those with a high weighting. This is the fastest way to make a significant impact on your overall rating.

Dig Deeper: Analyse Strengths and Weaknesses

For each theme, your scorecard provides a list of your company's main Strengths and Improvement Areas. This is the most valuable part of the analysis.

• Strengths might include having a comprehensive policy or a relevant ISO certification.
• Improvement Areas might point to a "Lack of emissions reduction targets" or "No reporting on waste generation KPIs."

Focusing your corrective action plan on these specific Improvement Areas will directly address the gaps identified by EcoVadis analysts.

From Insight to Action: Develop a Plan

Many improvement areas stem from clear gaps in your management system. Your plan should focus on:

• Addressing Policy Gaps: If you lack a formal, signed policy for a key area, developing one should be a top priority.
  For a detailed guide, see Starting from Scratch? Essential EcoVadis Policies & How to Create Them Quickly.
• Strengthening Documentation: Insufficient documentation is a common weakness. Ensure you provide complete, valid, and up-to-date evidence for all your claims. If you state you do training, provide the training records. If you have a target, show the data.
• Formalising Processes: If you have informal practices, work to formalise them into documented processes with clear responsibilities and steps.

Avoid Common Mistakes

As you begin your improvement journey, it helps to know what pitfalls to avoid. Many companies make common mistakes related to providing the wrong type of evidence, misunderstanding the scope, or submitting outdated documents.

For a detailed guide on this, read this popular post: 7 Common EcoVadis Mistakes And How To Avoid Them.

6. What's the Best Way to Share My EcoVadis Results?

Your EcoVadis scorecard isn't just a grade; it's a powerful communication tool that validates your commitment to sustainability. Once you have your results, you can use them to build trust with customers, partners, and investors.

Here are a few effective ways to share your performance:

• Share Your Scorecard Directly: The most transparent approach is to share your scorecard directly with customers by inviting them on the EcoVadis platform or by sending the PDF upon request. This helps meet their supplier screening requirements and can replace multiple custom sustainability questionnaires.
• Feature it on Your Website and Reports: Add your EcoVadis medal and overall score to your website's sustainability page or in your annual reports. This publicly demonstrates your commitment to transparency and performance.
• Incorporate it into Sales Proposals: Including your EcoVadis score or medal in responses to Requests for Proposal (RFPs) can be a significant competitive advantage, showing credible, third-party validation of your sustainability practices.
• Tell the Story of Your Progress: Don't just focus on the score itself. Communicate the story behind it. Highlight key strengths, show your year-over-year progress, and share your goals for the future. Demonstrating a commitment to continuous improvement is often more impressive than a static score.

7. Frequently Asked Questions