Don’t let sustainability jargon overwhelm you
Q. How do I go about producing a corporate responsibility report?
A. Annual report season? Bring it on. You’ve got the process down. You know what to expect, what to do and who to call – and then your CEO says it’s time to tackle the company’s first corporate responsibility (CR) report.
To be honest, this request is not entirely unanticipated. Increasingly, over the last decade, businesses around the globe have been implementing – and reporting on – practices that contribute to the wellbeing of the environment, economy and society. Still, even if you saw it coming, if you are newly responsible for reporting on your company’s CR performance, the range of activities that come under the CR banner can make it difficult to know where to start.
CR newbies confront an alphabet soup of organizations with methodologies for evaluating CR performance. Welcome to the world of GRI (the Global Reporting Initiative), ISO 26000 (International Organization for Standardization 26000 – guidance on social responsibility) and DJSI (the Dow Jones Sustainability Index), to name just a few of the major reporting benchmarks.
The GRI is generally recognized as the de facto standard for CR reporting, so first-time reporters should consider ways to incorporate key GRI indicators into their reporting, but there’s no need to come out of the gate at an A+ level. Most of the CR benchmarks, including the GRI, are set up so that first-timers can ease their way in and work toward a reporting standard that suits their culture, capacity and business objectives.
After selecting a reporting method, the toughest part of a first-time CR report is usually figuring out what is material to your company. What do you need to report on? At this stage, care should be taken to avoid two common pitfalls: limiting CR reporting to updates on a company’s corporate philanthropy efforts, or only telling good news stories.
Finding the data required for a CR report can also be a little daunting. The CR audience is wider than the annual report audience so, in addition to asking/hounding/begging finance for reporting data, CR reporters have to cast a net that includes departments like HR, operations and environment, health and safety. Obviously, it takes time to get a handle on working with new information, so it’s fortunate that, in CR reporting, you get credit for first steps.
For all the challenges that it brings, it’s important to remember that CR reporting gives you a new way to reach out to stakeholders. It offers a fresh platform for telling the story of how your organization connects with the world. And that’s not just another assignment: that’s an opportunity.
Lorie Brière is a founding principal of The Works Design Communications
