FabianPattberg.com

Today we received our organic vegetable box as we do every Monday. Inside where some great vegetables and this little note:

What a great short note to say that this lettuce is not perfect but that there is also nothing wrong with it. This is what I call direct and easy to understand communication. I, as a customer, would like to see more of this kind of communication. But obviously this is not the norm we all know when we talk about Sustainability / CSR reports and related documents.

This kind of communication as illustrated above is therefore I believe even more important if you are communicating your Sustainability / CSR topics as a business.

Why? Because Sustainability / CSR topics are not as easy to communicate as a soft drink that has less sugar then the leading brand for example. A Sustainability / CSR message is a lot less exciting and relies more on facts and is generally considered ‘boring’ by most of its stakeholders.

I have been taking a closer look at the latest Sustainability report from The Guardian News & Media Group yesterday. I must say that I really like the simplicity and directness but there are also some points I wanted to write about in todays post which I did not like that much and would change for the next report if I where in charge.

What I like about the Report:

• It seems that content, simplicity, accessibility and feedback options where key to the Guardian. Overall this has been achieved in a good way in my opinion. I like the layout of the Guardian website and this is no different. But there are some aspects on this topic as well addresses in the next section that i did not like so much.
• I also really liked the so called 15 minute digested read. A great idea simply realized.
  

  Guardian 2010 Sustainability Report

• The related column on the right hand side of each page is a great way of providing cross references to other interesting content. This is exactly what would need to taken to the next level to improve the user-friendliness and navigation through the content.

What I would do differently:

• Make the structure of the content is more dynamic in order to break up the text into more readable chunks. There is so much text on some pages that it makes my head hurt after reading through only a few sections. I really like the entry page of the Sustainability section. This clearly recognisable layout or at least some kind of graphics/symbols should be there to help guide the user within the structure of the report more.
• I would recommend to use a open access commenting system such as Disqus or Intense Debate to gather the feedback. Some other newspapers use this in their online editions and I am personally not inclined to register with every website to post a comment. This is a barrier of entry for feedback that can be fixed so easily for free or very little resources.

In Summary:
So is this the Sustainability reporting trend for companies involved in the news and media business? I am not so sure. This is one of many approaches a media company can take. The Guardian example is a good one but I don’t think the report is at the stage yet where it really engages its audience and make them want to comment and get in involved. This is what a media company should aim for. It needs to be different because its DNA is information and content management in my opinion.

I also want to clarify that this does not mean that I would recommend a microsite and present the content in a fancy flashy way. The content and messages just need to be broken up more so that the important aspects of the individual pages are communicated to us the readers right away. This is what I would like to see in a report from a media and news company such as the Guardian.

Everything in the CSR / Sustainability world at the moment seems to evolve around BP and its action/inactions to fix the oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. I am not doing any BP bashing here today. I am only using the current BP oil spill disaster in todays post as an example that CSR needs to evolve beyond its environmental aspects and the attention for detail by its practitioners.

This is my main argument in this post: Best practice such as the latest trend of integrated report, use of social media, etc. are steps in the right direction in my opinion but we need to increase the speed of the adoption of a more responsible business practice across the board within business in your local area and region.

The BP example has shown that big business will not act responsibly if it can get away with it. We therefore need to start at the local level to convince businesses to demand a more responsible business practice from all their businesses they are involved with. Customers and suppliers. Sustainability / CSR starts at the micro level and with clear guidance and support from a governmental level as I argued in my previous post.

This might sound very general and broad but it seems to me that we as Sustainability / CSR professionals are being caught up in the nitty gritty details of working with CSR / Sustainability far to easily and are somehow loosing the view of the big picture and the main purpose of this practice: To champion Sustainability / CSR and to help organizations in the transition to adopt a more responsible business practice.

This is the short video I recently did in partnership with 3blmedia on exactly this topic. Please let me know what you think about my argumentation and whether you agree or disagree.

Last week was a washout for me. I was either on the road travelling or sick in bed. This obviously wasn’t a good time to write a post on the reflection of integrated reporting discussion that went on at the GRI conference back at the end of May in Amsterdam. This week I am a lot better and did set some time aside for this post.

Current situation with integrated reporting
Integrated reporting is a very hot topic at the moment. Why? The GRI and some other organizations (here is the link to my post about this) have decided to put their full weight behind the adoption of integrated reporting (Integrated reporting = Consolidating financial and non financial reporting) in the foreseeable future. This is a very significant step for these global standard organizations to get behind integrated reporting as one single supporter.

About Integrated Reporting

• More information about integrated reporting can be found here on the wikipedia page.
• If you are interested in reading the GRI announcement in more details please follow this link.

Three points to consider within the current discussion about integrated reporting

• Having witnessed the promotion of the new integrated reporting push at the GRI conference I must say I am surprised. Surprised to see such a big push for this now. Why are looking at a promotion of this now? Have these large supporters given up on supporting the current bet practice in reporting?
• Another point is that the whole concept of integrated reporting heavily relies on the experience of the corporate reporter and the reporting organization. In my opinion is it absolutely vital for the current integrated reporting discussion to focus on bringing the know how and experience from current Sustainability reporting over to the integrated reporting teams. So far I have not heard anyone making this so crucial point.
• The scope of integrated reporting is not defined at the moment. We need to put more effort in developing this scope in order to have a clear guidance what and how to report financial and non-financial reporting in a way that is accessible and easy to read.

These are just three of the points I wanted to raise in this post. What do you about these points and whole concept of integrated reporting?

A little side note to end this post.
I have just registered the four domain names listed below to make sure they are not being snapped up by speculators as already happened with the integratedreporting.com domain name unfortunately.

The domain names I have registered today for further use:
IntegratedReporting.info
Integrated-Reporting.com
IntegratedReport.com
Integrated-Report.com

If you are interested in any of these domains and would like to develop a website with useful information about integrated reporting please feel free to get in touch. I am more then happy to help you in order to promote best practice in this field. My other domains can be found here. If you want to have a more extensive browse of my current portfolio. All of these domain are available for sale or rent or co-development.

Picture Credit: thetruthabout

The 2010 Sustainability and CSR Reporting is beginning. Here are some the most recent CSR reports that have been published so far (including my comments of course!),

Most recent Sustainability and CSR reports I have come across:

PepsiCo
This is a very interesting development from PepsiCo. They now publish a so called ‘Health Report’ instead of a Sustainability Report and new global commitments announced on nutrition, environmental sustainability and financial performance. All in all this is a really interesting development from PepsiCo. I did not expect this development.

Segro
Segro is a UK commercial property investment and development company with a really good Sustainability reporting track record. Their new report is no exception. Really good!

United Technologies
United Technologies Corporation (UTC) is a diversified company and has many bases to covers with regards to Sustainability and CSR content and communication. This new report is not bad but also shows how hard it can be for these kind of companies to report on their material issues and topics.

GlaxoSmithKline (GSK)
Hmm. This is a really difficult one. GSK and been part of the Sustainability and CSR reporting field for a long time. They have always reported on the topics and issues that are important to them and what they do to address these. But I expected something different this year, something more unique to GSK. To me this report and website have an old fashioned feel. Although the information provided is still very good.

The trend I can see so far for 2010:
Companies seem to move away from the classic CSR or Sustainability Reporting branding and go for Reporting on topics and issues that are more in tune with their individual business sector. Examples here are PepsiCo, Nestle and Segro. Other companies are still stuck in their old ways of reporting and presentation. Here examples include GSK and United Technologies.

I believe that there are arguments for both options, 1) continuity and 2) innovation. I prefer the innovation but this is the beauty of Sustainability and CSR reporting. The spectrum of stakeholders is very diverse and each company needs to decide for themselves how they want to report. So let’s see how and on what other companies will report on in the coming months.

UPDATE: Here are two more most recent reports I came across. Standard Chartered, a UK Bank. And Aviva, a UK based insurance company. Two good reports.

This is another video I thought was worth sharing with everyone.

The subject is the Sustainability Reporting of Dell.

I believe that this one part of the new kind of stakeholder communication companies are now starting to practice.

Stakeholder communication has and will further evolve into multifaceted communication and engagement campaigns that mostly center around social networking and community sites such as YouTube to get the word out and encourage a dialogue on the topics the companies want to address.

What is your opinion about this video? Do you think it is convincing?

I am conducting a poll every two weeks at the moment and last week I asked on Twitter what question my followers would like to have a poll on. Elaine Cohen had a really good question. She was curious what people where thinking about whether CSR Reporting should become mandatory for companies or not.

I really liked the idea and went straight ahead and used it as my poll question of the week.

Here are the results of the poll:

This is the direct link to the poll: http://twtpoll.com/na3igg

So what is the message from this poll?

The indisputable message here is that CSR reporting should be mandatory for companies.

84% are saying this. But the most interesting aspect is that there is a split between people demanding reporting for all organizations (44%) and people only demanding this for large and middle sized companies (40%).

I am interpreting this result in this way that reporting should be mandatory but a differentiation between small companies and large/medium sized companies is needed.

But what should this differentiation be? Maybe that small companies should either not have to report or have the choice to report? Or is there another differentiation you can think of?

This week was another good week for interesting sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) news. That is why I wanted to share some of the most interesting news items with you today. The usual way of sharing news that I come have across is that the most interesting news items will be posted in the news section of SustainabilityForum.com. That is why the first news items are all links to the SustainabilityForum.com.

Some selected SustainabilityForum.com News Items:

• Nokia Top – Nintendo Flop – Green Electronics
• Germany leads G8 Climate Ranking
• Report: Sustainability Innovation Benefits Irish Economy
• UK: Marks & Spencer worst supermarket for packaging, study finds
• BP shuts the alternative energy HQ

Other interesting news I have come across this week:

• The end of the glossy report: The future for CSR Reporting?
• CSR: Much more talk then action

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

Best wishes,

Fabian

The last 3 weeks have been packed with the publication of many Sustainability / CSR Reports. Here I some I came across and found interesting:

• Verizon (North American Telecoms Company)
• Infosys (Business Consulting, IT Systems and Outcourcing Company)
• Ford (I guess there is no need to tell you who Ford is)
• Siemens (Germany-based global technology company)
• Aracruz Cellulose (Global leader in eucalyptus pulb – very resource intensive)
• BCE (Canadas largest communications company)
• ST Microelectronics (Producer of semiconductor products)
• Coca-Cola Hellenic (One of the largest bottlers and vendors of Coca-Cola company’s products in the world)
• Orange (a large Telecommunication company based in Europe)
• Lufthansa (Global Airline)
• BAA (Owner of a lot of Airports across the globe)
• Enel SpA (Italian Energy Company)
• Xstrata (Global Mining Company)
• Vodafone (One of the largest telecommunication companies globally)

Have I missed any? All feedback welcomed.

We are at the height of the 2009 Sustainability / CSR Reporting season at the moment and I have seen some very interesting reports being published so far.

Todays post is about three of the most interesting I have come across in the past few weeks. I have also added a shortlist of other reports I would like to share with you.

My Top Three

Motorola
As you would expect from a consumer product driven company, this reporting website is visually very good and easy on the eye. There is more then enough content to get a good overview of their company specific issues such as Privacy, Environmental Impact of their products, supply chain management, socio-economic impact, etc.. All in all a very good reporting approach in my opinion.

British American Tobacco (BAT)
One of the important players in the Sustainability / CSR Reporting field in my opinion. They have been reporting at a very high quality level for many years now and in my opinion are still doing a great job at this. Don’t get me wrong; I do not agree with their product range (ie. Tobacco) but they are still one of the best in terms of stakeholder engagement and Sustainability /CSR Reporting. This report is definitely worth checking out. The fact that they explicitly state what they have and what they have not reported on throughout the website stands out in my opinion. Very ‘material’ as BAT would say.

Lafarge
This is an interesting report with a lot of detailed information. Maybe too much text and information for a web format at times. The only real downside in my opinion is the presentation. This could have been a bit more engaging at times. But I guess this is the trade off you have to take for granted when you want to provide so much information.

Here are some other Sustainability / CSR Reports that I came across over past few weeks but did not review in further detail:

• Legal and General (Financial Services)
• Segro (Real Estate)
• Amorin Group (Global cork manufacturer)
• Aviva (Insurance Group)
• Deutsche Börse (German Stock Exchange)
• Abbott (Pharmaceuticals)
• BAE Systems (Defence Industry)
• GlaxoSmithKline (Pharmaceuticals)

Have I missed any interesting reports? If so please either get in touch or just add your report via the commenting option.