📑 ESG Report Room
Build a listed company's first sustainability report: decide what matters, pick the right metrics, catch the greenwashing and face the investors.
The goal
Produce a sustainability report that investors and the regulator trust: the right topics, decision-useful metrics, no greenwashing, and credibility spent where it counts. Your team is the reporting team of Gulf Ports & Logistics PJSC, a fictional ports company listed in the UAE, writing its first sustainability report.
How a round works
The four rounds
- 1
🧭 Double materiality
Use a stakeholder survey and finance notes to pick the 5 material topics and the reporting standards.
What it teaches: Material if the impact on the world OR the financial effect on the company is high.
- 2
📏 Metrics and data
Pick decision-useful metrics for climate, safety, marine pollution and anti-corruption, and handle missing data.
What it teaches: Numbers with units, standard definitions and full coverage.
- 3
🔍 Greenwashing review
Six draft headline claims: keep, fix or delete.
What it teaches: Absolute words, vagueness and hidden exclusions are red flags.
- 4
📊 Assurance and investor day
Spend AED 100k and answer an analyst's question about a fuel spill.
What it teaches: Assurance, a transition plan and honest answers build credibility.
Your decisions
| Material topics and standards | Round 1 | Pick 5 of 10 topics and choose ISSB, GRI, both or your own format. ISSB serves investors; GRI covers impacts. Both together cover double materiality. |
|---|---|---|
| Metrics and data gaps | Round 2 | For each disclosure choose the best metric, and decide whether to estimate, omit or copy missing data. Estimate and explain the method. |
| Claim review | Round 3 | Keep, fix or delete six draft claims. Most bad claims can be fixed by being specific. |
| Budget and the spill question | Round 4 | Split AED 100k across assurance, data systems, a transition plan, scenario analysis and design; answer the analyst. About AED 25k per item makes a difference. |
Worked example. “We protect the marine environment” is vague. A fixed version: “2 spills totalling 3 m³ in 2025; 12 hectares of mangrove restored.”
How you are scored
Round score = accuracy of your choices against the answer key (0–100).
Event cards
- Regulator review. Misleading claims cost double trust.
- Activist investor. A funded transition plan earns extra trust.
- Budget squeeze. The reporting budget falls 30%.
- Media spotlight. Vague or false claims draw extra criticism.
Students: join in 30 seconds
- Scan the QR code on the big screen, or open games.inlabsgroup.com/esg-report-room and type the code.
- Type your first name. No app, no account.
- Join a team or create one. You get a role with a job on every round.
- Each round: read the briefing and data, fill in your decisions, predict your score, submit.
Key words
- Double materiality
- A topic matters if the company has a big impact on it, or it has a big financial effect on the company.
- ISSB
- International Sustainability Standards Board: IFRS S1 (general) and IFRS S2 (climate), written for investors.
- GRI
- Global Reporting Initiative standards, focused on impacts on people and the planet.
- Assurance
- An independent check of reported numbers, limited or reasonable.
- Transition plan
- How a company will reach its climate targets: actions, money and milestones.
- Greenwashing
- Claims that make a company look greener than it is.
For facilitators 4 rounds · about 50 minutes
Facilitator access
- On the projector laptop open games.inlabsgroup.com/esg-report-room/?host.
- Sign in with your facilitator PIN or demo code.
- In Setup choose Team, Individual or Hybrid, the number of teams (up to 20), rounds and minutes.
- Press Q for the big join QR code; students appear in People.
- Press Start. Reveal each round, discuss the answer key on the projector, then draw an event card.
Joining with the QR code
- As a team
- One report per team; the risk role leads the claim review.
- Alone
- Everyone writes their own report: good for assessment.
- Hybrid
- Everyone answers on their phone; the team score is the average.
Setup tips
- Introduce double materiality with one example before Round 1.
- Use the regulator card before Round 3.
- Read the answer key aloud after each round.
Watch for
- Teams that pick topics because they sound nice.
- Copying data silently.
- Keeping absolute claims.
Console controls
Start, Reveal, pause or set the timer, step back, draw or write event cards, message every screen, freeze the projector, spotlight a team, hide names, add bots, move players, award or fine, change score weights, start a new game or end it early, show all teams, and download the CSV of every decision and result. Keys: P projector, Q join QR.
Debrief questions
- Which topic did you misjudge, and why?
- Which claim was hardest to judge, and how would you rewrite it?
- Why do investors value assurance and a transition plan more than a glossy design?
Probing questions
- Why does an investor care about worker safety?
- What turns a vague claim into a credible one?
- Why is assurance worth more than design?