2010 May | FabianPattberg.com

Day 2 and 3 of the GRI conference 2010

May 28, 20102:53 pm

Day 2 and 3 of the GRI conference where two days full of individual sessions about specific topics ranging from UNGC and the GRI to XBRL and Sustainability reporting and a plenary session to wrap it up. We as participants where able to pick and choose sessions we where most interested in. A really good plan after a long day of plenary presentations on Day 1. Identifying key themes was therefore quite difficult but I picked up three different themes during these two days that I wanted to share with everyone.

Key themes I came across on day 2 and 3 of the conference:

Stakeholder Engagement especially using Social Media is a difficult thing to get right. This became very clear during the session about the future of stakeholder engagement using interactive technology on Day 2. Here some participants and panelists including Joe Confino from the Guardian Newspaper, Martin Smith from JustMeans went head to head with the SAP representative on the question whether the latest SAP report was a step in the right direction for promote stakeholder engagement. A very heated but really interesting discussion. SAP was not on the panel but Jo Confino picked their latest report to show that sophisticated Sustainability reporting is not aways easy to do. I do not agree with Joe but he made some interesting points and so did the SAP representative. All in all proper stakeholder engagement.

Integrated reporting was also the topic over the last two days. I did not attend any sessions specifically about this but speaking to many people about the announcement of the GRI to fully support the adoption of integrated reporting it is very clear that the adoption of integrated reporting will be the next big goal of governance bodies and think tanks in this field. But I also got the feeling that financial and non financial accounting are very likely to be ‘forced’ to work together. I am still highly skeptical about the usefulness of integrated reporting but I am happy to be convinced that this is the way to go for the future.

The future is in our hands and the GRI needs to play a role in shaping this future. The plenary session to end the conference really asked the right question. Where do we go from here? The aspects that where covered where pretty different as there was a good range of speakers but the overall message was that we need to do something now and not wait any longer. And the GRI and the aspect of integrated reporting are playing a crucial role in this.

Another big event here was the GRI Readers Choice (RCA) Awards and they are all from Brazil! Yes you read right… all from Brazil.

These are the winners of the RCA Awards:

The RCA Most Effective Report Award winner is Banco Bradesco
The RCA Investor Award winner is Banco do Brasil
RCA Best Overall Report Award is Banco do Brasil
The RCA Value Chain Award is won by Natura Cosmeticos from Brayil
The RCA civil society award goes to Vale from (what a surprise) from Brazil!

In Summary:

All in all this was a very interesting conference. I am feeling very fortunate to be able to spend my day networking, discussing and learning more about Sustainability and CSR topics. And this is what a conference should be. For me it was about getting into detail on some of the topics such as XBRL, Social Media and this is what the conference was able to provide. Looking forward to the next one in 2011!

Day 1 of the Global Reporting (GRI) Conference

May 26, 20109:03 pm

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I arrived in Amsterdam for the GRI Conference yesterday expecting to connect with many likeminded people and to pick up the latest trends and opinions on Sustainability and CSR.

This is the first of three posts I will do this week covering this conference.

Impressions from Day 1 (A more detailed report will follow during the later stages of this week):

In general the mood of conference organizers, sponsors, speakers and participants I talked to seems to be a good and constructive one. The conference is now sold out and despite the economic downturn Sustainability/CSR professionals still find this conference highly useful, for them and their business. The venue is good and a lot of the key players in the field are attending.

Integrated reporting seems to be the major theme here from what I can tell after the first day. Everyone is talking about it here and some of the plenary session speakers today really went into detail about it. GRI also announced that it would fully support a move to integrated reporting. So does the organization supported by the HRH the Prince of Wales- Accounting for Sustainability. These are two heavyweights in terms of Sustainability / CSR opinion and this for me is a clear sign that integrated reporting will be a key area of work for GRI in the coming months.

Twitter is making the conference very interactive. There was one point half way through the plenary session where I counted something like 14 different people tweeting on a regular basis throughout the day when I searched for the #griconference hashtag on Twitter. This is a sign of the future to come with regards to stakeholder engagement at these kind of events. Two years ago this kind of engagement would have been unthinkable. GRI also provided free Wifi which was great to foster communication via Twitter. Tomorrow we will hopefully see the continuation of this online engagement.

In summary:
Day 1 of the conference was really interesting. But Day 2 will hopefully be even more interesting. Now we are going into the individual discussion panels and topic specific presentations.
So stay tuned for coverage of Day 2 tomorrow evening or follow the live tweets on Twitter with the hashtag: #griconference. This is the direct link to all the tweets from the conference. http://search.twitter.com/search?q=griconference If you prefer to follow individual Twitter users attending the conference then you will find a list of these participants here: http://www.fabianpattberg.com/2010/05/people-twitter-attending-gri-csr-conference/

People on Twitter that also attend the GRI conference next week

May 21, 20102:43 pm

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I am attending the Global Reporting (GRI) conference next week. While doing some preparation for the session I will be moderating at the conference I wondered who is going to the conference that is also on Twitter and/or a reader of my blog. I had no clue.

The purpose of today’s post is to feature a list of people that I know are going to the conference. I believe that this list will be very helpful to some of you in order to connect while being at the conference.

But here is the important bit: I rely on you to tell me other people that are going to be in Amsterdam next week. So please either comment or send me a message through the About page template. This list will be edited by me as we approach the conference and during the time of the conference.

Here is the list of people I know that are on Twitter and will also be at the GRI conference:

Elaine Cohen from BeyondBusiness
N amrata Rana aka futurechat
James Farrar from SAP
Bill Baue from Sea Change Media
Martin Smith from JustMeans
Susan M B from Novo Nordisk
P-F Thaler aka pierrov
Solitaire Townsend from Futerra
sguyoton from EcoVadis
Olaf Brugman aka vikingbridge from Rabobank
Nisia Werneck aka nisiaw
Bart Slob aka UNGCCritics
Jo Confino from the Guardian newspaper
Sandra Nessing aka Watts4U

Please let me know whether there is anyone you know on Twitter that is going as well. I will then add this person or organisation and update this list continuously.

First impressions – CSR in the Middle East

May 18, 20102:52 pm

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Several weeks ago I was invited to come to the Lebanon and speak about CSR reporting. I wasn’t sure what to make of it a the beginning but after a few minutes into the conversation I realized that this man I was speaking to really knew what he was talking about. It all sounded really interesting, something that was absolutely necessary to support in my opinion and another great opportunity to promote CSR. I therefore confirmed my interest and I was on a plane to Beirut yesterday.

beirut First impressions CSR in the Middle East

We had the first ever CSR Seminar here in Beirut today. I think it was a success and I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the topics discussed, the regional input and the totally different culture.

More will follow in a proper post at a later stage but as I am a blogger I needed to share my immediate thoughts today and need some feedback if possible.

Here are my impressions from today:

The audience was very receptive to the overall concept of CSR
They even had several TV crews at the event. So you might even get the joy on seeing me on TV if you live the Middle East that is.
Culturally I believe is CSR is a really good fit for businesses here in he Middle East. The sense of community and responsibility is really strong.
Western best practice is really helping to frame the objective of what is needed for businesses to see their CSR objective
People with CSR experience in this field are really in high demand.
Lebanese people in particular are so hospitable. Just amazing how kind they are.

As I have written at the beginning, I will do a proper post later this or next week so stay tuned for more. In the meantime would I love to hear from you what your experiences with CSR and the Middle East are. No worries if you have none but maybe you could help me in sharing what you would expect to find in terms of CSR best practice, cultural sensitivity in relation to CSR, etc?

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/austinevan/77932067/

On the relationship of the government and the CSR / Sustainability field

May 12, 20104:14 pm

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Yesterday was an extraordinary day if you are of British nationality or are living in the UK. David Cameron became new prime minster. Here is the link to the BBC website for more information. For me this change in government here in the UK brings up the big question which is so difficult to answer.

What should the relationship between governments and the CSR/ Sustainability field be? And by this I mean each and every government across the globe. Not just the UK government of course.

Downing Street On the relationship of the government and the CSR / Sustainability field

I am not a political expert and would never dream of getting into a political debate. But I realized today that I have not written a blog post about this topic so far and I feel that this topic is very important to discuss. So today seems a good day to write about this difficult and very sensitive topic (for some people). Please also note that the following points purely reflect my opinion based on my experience working in this field.

The role of governments from across the globe with regards to Sustainability / CSR as I see it:

Governments need to be involved to a higher degree in the Sustainability / CSR affairs of companies nationally. I believe that government rules/legislation, taking the country context into consideration, is essential to the future success of the Sustainability / CSR field. I know that this is a highly sensitive topic but the past has shown that no role of the government does not really work in my opinion. Business will not thrive to me more responsible. The government amongst other influencers of course need to play its role.
But at the same time governments need to take a gentle lead. Not forcing but also not tolerating to much flexing of the rules by companies with regards to Sustainability / CSR practices and corporate spin.
Once this gentle lead has been established governments needs to start listen more to what the companies and individuals in the field are saying in order to promote innovation and progress.

These are the three main points I feel would be important to promote Sustainability / CSR across the globe. The important aspect here is that they all work in a close partnership and not as separate entities. Just like the new political coalition here in the UK, companies and the government need to form a partnership in order to achieve overall progress.

The points above are not rocket science and are pretty straight forward. But as I stated in previous posts, innovation and working in a partnership will bring us a long way and I feel that a bigger steer from governments can provide more structure and certainty for the professional field as a whole.

Facebook Community Pages: Promoting CSR via Facebook

May 10, 20102:30 pm

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I have recently started to do a lot more Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) related information-sharing via Facebook. When I began my Facebook crusade, I blogged about it here as well. I listed the positives and negatives I found using Facebook as a information platform.

Since then Facebook introduced several interesting changes that all help us as Sustainability / CSR professionals and enthusiasts to increasingly use Facebook as a hub for sharing information and connecting with likeminded people. One of those recent changes has been the introduction of Facebook community pages. This is the link to the Facebook blog about purpose of community pages

This quote really captures the essence of it:
‘ Community Pages are a new type of Facebook Page dedicated to a topic or experience that is owned collectively by the community connected to it. Just like official Pages for businesses, organizations and public figures, Community Pages let you connect with others who share similar interests and experiences.’ Instead of becoming a fan you click whether you ‘like’ the topic, interest or experience.

I really like the idea of these page types and went to work straight away by creating a community page for the topic I am so passionate about: Corporate Social Responsibility
This is the link to the community page: Corporate Social Responsibility on Facebook.

So far over 100 people have ‘liked’ it and I hope you will find this page useful to spread the word about CSR.

So what do you think about these new community pages? Do you think they will be popular and useful? Will you indicate what you like and share this with your friends on Facebook? I think this is a positive move by Facebook and these pages can be used as all sort of tools to promote CSR across the globe.

Four CSR developments I identified at the last conference

May 6, 20104:10 pm

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The Responsible Business Summit (RBS) ended yesterday and I was privileged to be part of this interesting conference. The last two days helped me to get a feeling about some of the major developments within the Sustainability / CSR field.

This is the link to a previous post about my impressions of the first conference day. Day 1 of the RBS 2010 if you are interested in the first day in particular. The second day was equally interesting but very different as there were only so called “break out sessions” on a wide range of Sustainability / CSR topics. I attended several of these break out sessions. My aim was to find these topics which included elements such as trust, social media and leading CSR best practice.

At the end of the conference I tried to identify several interesting developments which I wanted to share with you. Here they are:

The Sustainability / CSR agenda within organizations is changing. It is moving into the mainstream but only really slowly. Why? Well, there are individual companies such as GSK, BAT, Tesco, etc. with engaging and groundbreaking best practice. But the problem here is that 85% of all other organisations do not know much about the topic of CSR / Sustainability and most of them have no idea about how CSR / Sustainability can enhance their business. I feel that this is still a worrying sign and continues to represent a lot of work for us as Sustainability / CSR professionals.
Sustainability / CSR professionals nowadays are distributed mainly across two geographic areas. North American and Europe. But what about the rest of the worlds participation in this field? This is a big issue i. I almost feel as if Sustainability / CSR is now a profession for the Western world predominately.
The trend is going towards online conferences to supplement offline conferences. Ethical Corporation has done a great job with the speaker list and organization. But it seems to me that online conferences will be the fast growing tool to engage with other practitioners in the future. The latest example is the upcoming SustainabilityNow next week.
Trust remains the big topic in the field. Trusting organizations to do the right thing has been seriously undermined with the failures in the banking sector and its corporate malpractice. It will be interesting to see the development of trust once we are out of the economic downturn and organizations are looking to reach out to stakeholders more instead of purely focusing on organizational survival.

These are four of the developments I have observed. Any comments on these and whether you agree, disagree or would like to add points?

Responsible Business Summit 2010 – Impressions from Day 1

May 5, 20107:16 am

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The purpose of this post is to be a reflection of my impressions of the first day attending the 9th Responsible Business Summit hosted by Ethical Corporation here in London yesterday. The participants list promised some interesting discussions and I was looking forward to connecting with Twitter friends such as Mallen Baker, Scheubel Develop, Lumina CR, James Farrar as well as many other friends and former colleagues.

What are my main impressions from this first day?

The overall impression I got from the corporate and consultancy participants was that business is difficult at the moment and everyone is feeling this negative effect in their area. Businesses and individuals. I doesn’t matter whether you are in the the steel industry or telecoms business. The recession has hit business hard and CSR activities, budgets and headcount took a hit too.

This just reinforced my feeling that CSR and Sustainability is at a cross-roads at the moment. There are these companies that are still very successful and are going from strength to strength. This is usually the first line when you talk to people from the corporate CSR world. But once you start getting into the more detailed conversations I found that there are equally as many companies that have to make very tough decisions with regards to what CSR / Sustainability activities. The theme is scaling down and business process optimizing. As a consequences many practitioners pointed out to me that these are decisions that will inevitably effect the innovation capabilities within the CSR / Sustainability field and its best practice.

And this this seems to be an important aspect. The overall popularity of CSR and Sustainability is rising when you look at the big picture but at the same time best practice innovation is stalling. This is what I could tell from my conversations and discussions throughout the day. I have not come across the innovative initiative or strategy that really wowed me so far. It seems to be business as usual as far as I can tell. CSR and Sustainability know what they need to do but so far I am missing the strong will and attitude to achieve change within the industry. Everyone is doing business as usual but not more unfortunately.

In later conversations during the day I exactly pointed this out to Mallen Baker and James Farrar just to name two people also present on Twitter. They agreed to a certain degree to my assessment but also pointed out that this might be the perception and feeling of people who have been working in the CSR Sustainability field for quite a while now. Which I have obviously. We (the CSR / Sustainability professionals) might be to saturated with best practice to not appreciate the innovation currently happening in the field. I had to admit that this made sense to me.

What is your opinion on this? Are the people that have worked in this field for several years not able to see the really valuable new best practice out there? Any feedback would be very useful as always.

Let’s see whether the second day will provide me with a different impression. So stay tuned for more from me this week.

Fabian Pattberg

Monthly Archives - May 2010