The TVR has a long history of highlighting leaders in corporate sustainability. The most striking finding in the TVR 2016 - the first time we have assessed the connection between sustainability and business value - is the number of companies that score well with regards to their corporate sustainability strategy yet fail to demonstrate how this delivers value to their organisation. These companies are missing a massive opportunity to communicate how their company is benefitting from their sustainability strategy.

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Companies continue to perform poorly with regards to corporate target setting. The TVR 2016 finds that targets are too often vague and accountability for their achievement is unclear. In setting targets, the wider supply chain is often not considered to fully understand where the company has the ability to influence their impact effectively.

Few companies are able to demonstrate leadership in stakeholder engagement and materiality in this year’s research, yet few are doing it badly. Most companies occupy the middle ground – they selectively engage with stakeholders but lack a formal process for their identification and how to define the issues the issues they engage on. The results of engagement do not feed back into corporate strategy.

Comparing corporate strategy scores against an organisation’s capacity to innovate we observed a strong correlation. R&D spend as a proportion of revenue increases the closer an organisation is to demonstrating leadership in sustainability strategy.

Unsurprisingly, there is close correlation with companies that demonstrate sound governance principles and those that perform well in terms of company preparedness. However, demonstrating good governance structures and supporting polices is not sufficient to guarantee good performance; our research found no link between governance and sector value. Good governance ensures senior management are given the responsibility to deliver upon sustainability commitments and drives management behaviour and performance.

A notable highlight from our research is the link between board independence and overall TVR score; high rates (in some cases over 90%) of independence are shown by the companies that score highly overall.

Amongst the companies included in the TVR 2016, tax paid (as % of reported profit) in the past financial year was consistently around or above 20%. In response to a number of high profile cases in the media we can see companies responding and being more transparent around the tax they pay.