What is EcoVadis and how to prepare your company for it?

Since January 2024, EcoVadis gives a bronze medal only to the top 35% of the companies it rates, down from the top 50%. Silver now needs the top 15%, down from 25% (EcoVadis, 2024). So a score that won a medal a few years ago may not win one today. If a customer asks you for an EcoVadis rating, the number of documents you upload does not decide the result. Their fit with the questions that apply to your company does.

• What is EcoVadis: a global platform that rates how well a company manages sustainability, based on its documents.
• Not a certificate: you get a scorecard and, with a high enough result, a medal or a badge.
• Four themes: environment, labour and human rights, ethics, and sustainable procurement.
• Preparation: read your own questionnaire first, then match your documents to the active questions.

What is EcoVadis and why does it matter for ESG?

EcoVadis is a global platform with one rating system for all companies. It measures how well a company manages sustainability. EcoVadis does not only read statements. It checks if your company has clear rules, working processes and results. This is why customers include an EcoVadis rating in their purchasing requirements and supplier reviews.

A well-run process can mean more for your company than an ESG trend. EcoVadis shows how mature your company is in areas such as people, environmental impact, ethics, human rights and purchasing. It also helps you put your ESG strategy in order. And it makes talks with customers easier, because they ask for evidence, not just statements.

Is EcoVadis a certificate or a rating?

EcoVadis is not a certification in the ISO sense. It is not a simple scheme where you do X, Y and Z and get a certificate. It is a sustainability rating. Its method assesses the quality of your management systems. In other words, you do not get proof that your company is perfect. You get a result that shows how mature your approach to sustainability is.

This matters because many people ask about a certificate. Today, EcoVadis shows the result mainly in a scorecard and, if your company meets the criteria, in a medal or a badge. But a medal does not mean that your product or service is “green”. It means that your company has built a fairly strong sustainability management system. So it is better to think of EcoVadis as an ESG rating than as a certification.

How does the EcoVadis questionnaire work and what decides its scope?

The EcoVadis questionnaire is not the same for every company. The platform adapts it to your industry, country and size. The active questions follow from your risk profile. So two companies can get very different questions, a different number of active topics and different weights. This is why your first step should not be to collect random files. First read your own questionnaire and check which criteria are active. EcoVadis also says that you should not tick criteria that are not active.

You answer the questionnaire by attaching documents to the chosen answers. After you submit it, you cannot freely change your evidence until a new assessment starts. So you must understand the questions well before you submit. To prepare well, first analyse the active criteria. Then check which documents you already have and which are missing.

Which areas does the EcoVadis assessment cover?

The EcoVadis method has four main themes:

1. Environment,
2. Labour and Human Rights,
3. Ethics,
4. Sustainable Procurement.

In these four themes, EcoVadis checks if your company has policies, actions and reports that show it really manages the topic. This fits the logic of ESG well. It covers the environment, people, governance and the supply chain.

In practice, your questions depend on your industry. They may cover, for example, your carbon footprint, energy, waste, health and safety, ethics or cyber security. For many companies, the hardest part is that general ESG statements are not enough. You must show how each part of your ESG strategy works in your operations, documents and results. This is why EcoVadis is useful: it makes you turn slogans into processes.

How to prepare for the EcoVadis assessment?

The best way to prepare is to start with the questionnaire. After registration, you have 30 working days to complete it. You can usually extend this by another 40 working days. Only when you know which questions are active can you judge if your documents match the requirements. EcoVadis recommends its help materials. They explain the scope of the assessment, the choice of evidence and how to attach documents. This matters because many companies have documents, but do not always match them to the right answers.

At this stage, build a simple map: policies, actions and results. Check that you have something formal to show for each active question. Sometimes an existing procedure or report is enough. In other cases, you need to add a missing target, make a policy more precise or put documents in order. This usually works better than writing large new documents that do not answer the questions in the form.

Which supporting documents do you need for the EcoVadis questionnaire?

Your supporting documents should match exactly what you tick in the system. If you say you run training, show the programme, the list of participants or the training material. If you tick environmental procedures, show the formal document. If you talk about results, show a report, a KPI table or a register. EcoVadis accepts formal documents that reflect your management system, also in smaller companies. But they must match your answers.

The form of the files matters too. EcoVadis now requires files that are machine-readable. The safest are PDF, Word and Excel files exported from your systems, not photos, scans or screenshots. Also include the formal elements: company name, date, scope and sometimes a version number. Before you upload, you can check each file against our EcoVadis document checklist. If a document supports, for example, your environmental policy or targets under GRI or ISO, it must be clear and credible for the analyst. The EcoVadis help centre has examples of what the platform expects from files.

What does the EcoVadis assessment process look like?

The EcoVadis process starts with registration or with an invitation from a business partner. After you create an account, your company starts the registration and the questionnaire on the EcoVadis platform. Then your company chooses a subscription and fills in the answers and attachments.

Completing the questionnaire can take from a few hours to a few days. It depends on how mature your company is and how ready your documents are. The default deadline to submit the form is 30 working days. After you submit, EcoVadis analysts review your answers. Publishing the result usually takes 6 to 8 weeks. To go through the process smoothly, put your evidence in order early and do not leave the submission for the last week.

What do the scorecard and the medal show? Can you get platinum?

After the assessment, your company gets a scorecard in the EcoVadis portal. It shows your result in the four themes, your strengths and the areas to improve. The scorecard is the most important outcome of the whole process. It shows not only your points, but also the logic of the rating and where you lose points. It is the best basis for improving your sustainability management.

If your result is high enough, your company can get a medal or a badge. EcoVadis gives these to companies that showed a strong management system compared with other rated companies. The highest level is the platinum medal. But a medal is not a simple quality diploma, and it does not replace real action. It shows in short that your company reached a high level of sustainability maturity in the EcoVadis assessment.

Why does EcoVadis matter for business partners and tenders?

For many companies, an EcoVadis rating is not just an internal ESG project. The result affects how customers judge you as a supplier. Sometimes it even decides if you can take part in a tender. A partner can ask you to share your result in the EcoVadis network. With higher plans, you can also share your scorecard outside the network. So a good result gives you an advantage in purchasing talks and supplier selection.

A large partner may expect its suppliers to manage environmental, social and ethical risks. Then EcoVadis becomes a common language. In many industries, a main customer starts the whole process. It expects a clear approach to ESG and a will to improve.

What really helps you get a high EcoVadis score?

The number of documents is not what affects your score most. Their consistency is. A good policy has targets. Actions show that the policy works. Results show progress. Then your score rises faster than with many files and no clear logic. These things help most:

• work on the active criteria,
• current documents,
• measurable KPIs,
• regular work on ethics, human rights, environmental impact and ESG in purchasing.

EcoVadis rewards progress, not perfection at the first attempt. If you already have policies but no full reporting yet, start with the main gaps. Then a new assessment lets you show your progress. So a plan in three steps works best:

1. Put the questionnaire in order.
2. Add the missing elements.
3. After the assessment, use the scorecard as a map for improvement.

This usually works better than trying to produce everything at once.

Key points to remember

• EcoVadis is not a classic certification, but a rating of how mature your company is in sustainability and ESG.
• First analyse your own questionnaire, and only then collect documents.
• In each theme, EcoVadis looks at three layers: policies, actions and results.
• Your documents must be readable, formal and matched to specific answers.
• Good preparation means work on the active criteria, not on every possible topic.
• An analyst reviews the submitted form, and the result usually comes in 6 to 8 weeks.
• The result helps not only with ESG, but also in talks with customers and suppliers and in tenders.
• The fastest way to improve is consistency between policy, action and result, not more attachments.