HERO 
by Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer

The Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer ESG Reporting Organiser (HERO) is a digital platform that supports organisations to navigate the evolving legal and regulatory landscape. It is designed to simplify and enhance sustainability reporting and related process uplift.

HERO empowers organisations to deliver sustainability reporting with ease through the following features:

• 'Living library' – access to a dynamic and user-friendly library of underlying disclosure requirements (including AASB S1 and S2 and ESRS) alongside any accompanying regulatory guidance, assurance requirements, transitional relief, and defined terms, that are kept up-to-date as regulatory requirements and implementation guidance continue to develop. 
• Projects and checklists – creation of custom projects that utilise reporting frameworks to provide tailored checklists of disclosure requirements and related guidance. 
• Project management – streamlined management of processes and disclosures, that assists users to track compliance in support of audit and legal review, and create an action log and evidence trail that supports directors in providing required sign-offs on the sustainability report. 
• Collaboration – a central location to collaborate with team members, including the ability to delegate tasks and responsibility for requirements and post comments and basis of preparation notes, facilitating efficient and effective management of compliance with underlying requirements. 
• ‘Evidence Library’ – storage of files or links aligned to specific disclosure requirements to support drafting, verification, auditor review, and director sign-off. 
• Dashboard – an overview of compliance, tasks, frameworks and requirements for any number of projects.

HERO is suitable for all companies making sustainability-related disclosures. It currently includes the Australian Sustainability Reporting Standards and the European Sustainability Reporting Standards and can be built out to cover additional frameworks as they come into force.

HERO can be used by your sustainability, legal, company secretariat, finance, risk, and strategy teams, and enables efficient compliance reviews by your external advisers.

HERO gives you the structure, tools and insights you need to make sense of complex requirements, manage compliance workflows, and collaborate seamlessly across teams. 

Here are some of the ways in which you can use HERO on your sustainability compliance and reporting journey:

Understand the requirements
Use the living library, that makes the legal requirements and applicable guidance easily digestible, to bring cross-functional teams onto the same page as to what is required for compliance. A clear understanding of the minimum legal requirements mitigates the risk of rework and wasted effort.

Streamline collaboration by narrowing in on what matters to specific teams 
Direct your stakeholders to relevant requirements in a structured and transparent way by filtering the requirements based on key topics (e.g. scenario analysis, scope 3 emissions), assigning responsibility and tasks with automated notifications, and tracking progress within HERO.

Support preparation of your sustainability report
Slice and dice disclosure requirements (through thematic filtering of requirements relevant to a key topic) and use the evidence captured in HERO to facilitate accurate and efficient preparation of your sustainability report.

Prepare for compliance reviews with your advisers
Collect and track evidence, assumptions and judgments made, and monitor your progress towards compliance, to drive efficiencies in engagement with your legal adviser and auditor for pre-assurance and assurance.

Support the Board to sign-off on your sustainability report
Build a clear snapshot of compliance, on a requirement-by-requirement basis, accompanied by supporting evidence so that directors can give their required sign-off on the sustainability report with confidence.