FabianPattberg.com

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 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.

After spending some time over the past few months discussing other Sustainability topics I would now like to add another review of a Sustainability Report. Todays review will be on the Proctor & Gamble 2008 Sustainability Report.
This is the third Sustainability report review I have done so far. Here is the link to all the reviews and an introduction to how I review Sustainability reports.

Titled ‘Designed to innovate…sustainably’ is Proctor & Gamble’s 10th Sustainability Report was published roughly 2 months ago. I will assess the report with the help of my rating system.

But here are some overall comments on the Website and the Report itself before I will move on to the rating system.

General Comments

Placement on the overall pg.com website
The sustainability section of the website is very hard to find through the navigation (after looking around for a while I found it in the Company section). I also think that the navigation on the left side is a little awkward and the content is really all over the place in most cases.
The Sustainability Report itself does not seem to be part of the actual pg.com website. It seems to be a separate microsite. This is not a good positioning in my opinion. A company should provide a clear navigation for the user to find what they are looking for. But you are not able to find the term „innovating sustainability“ anywhere on the website. This is  misleading and not easy for anyone looking the Sustainability Report.

Good feature – The Sustainability Report Front Page
The large banner is a nice feature and the ability to scroll over links is very use friendly. Interesting structure with Defining, Investing, Managing, Delivering and Leading. I like the approach.

Nice Idea -Strategy and Goals
I like the strategy and goal section. Really useful to see the progress against their targets.

A Good Way to present the P&G Goals – The Report Card
I also like the idea of a Sustainability report card. This is very useful for the user to get an overview of the P&G Sustainability Goals.

So here we with a more detailed report review on the basis of this rating system. I started this rating system to make reports more comparable.

Fabians Sustainability Points System

Reporting Period – 10/10
They report annually. Full marks.

Topics & Clarity – 7/10 points
Well I think they have chosen their topics very well in order to make their enormous product lines somehow fit into topical areas. But the navigation lets it down as it is hard to find what you are looking for right away. Everything seems to be hidden away somehow. Starting with the fact that the user needs to click on “Company” first and then on “Our  Commitment” to get to the relevant sustainability pages.

Reporting Of The Material Issues – 8/10 points
This is done in a good and satisfactory way. Well done.

Reporting On Performance Indicators? – 3/10 points
Well there is some sort of a performance indicator section. And there is the GRI Performance Indicator section. But this is by no means sufficient information for a global company as important as P&G. A lot more could be done there.

Reporting According To The GRI G3? – 4/10 points
P&G only provide information about the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) in the PDF Sustainability Report document but not on the website. This is not best practice and does no provide sufficient access to interesting GRI related data for the users.

Reference To Other Parts Of Their Website – 5/10 points
P&G could do more with linking the other parts of the PG.com website and connect these parts more with the content of the Sustainability Report. This has been done in some places but not enough in my opinion.

Which Communication Tools Are They Using? – 4/10 points
Not many. There are some parts of the website with a good visualization and random interactivity tools. But P&G could do a lot more in terms of interactivity.

CSR Report Contact: An Actual Contact person or Just An Email Address? – 3/10 points
Here P&G is only providing an email address: sustainrep.im@pg.com This is not enough for one of the largest firms in the world. An stakeholder section with an easy and more direct way to contact P&G would be the ideal solution.

Do They Provide Information What They May Have Omitted? – 2/10 points
No. But they at least they report on how they are doing on some of their targets. That is a start.

Assurance: Has The CSR Review been Assured By An External Auditor? – 1/10 points
P&G have decided to not have the report and its content assured. No external verifier and no checks by the GRI. This is not best practice and devalues the report to a better marketing tool. But they are stating that this is their view. That is why they get one point out of ten here.

Total points for the Proctor & Gamble 2008 Sustainability Report: 47/100 points

Overall Opinion: This report including the website have some good and interesting sides to it but this is does not make this report a good report. I am of the opinion that this report is below average in terms of the sustainability information provided, stakeholder communication tools and the decision to not seek external assurance for their content and data. This on its own devaluates this good effort to nothing more then a marketing tool, unfortunately.

Sorry for the lack of posts this week. It has been an extremely busy week. Nevertheless have I been reading some interesting stories this week. The most interesting articles make it into my weekly top 5 list.
This week my favourite in terms of topical area is the article on nuclear power as I believe that our decision whether to invest in nuclear power is a decision of great significance for our sustainable future. I also really liked the Al Gore’s article on Sustainable Capitalism in the WSJ.
Take a look and let me know what you think by commenting below.

My Top 5 Sustainability/CSR News Stories this week:

British Energy chief: “We can’t meet our climate change obligations without nuclear”
Nuclear operator claim plans for four new reactors need to be accelerated. If you like it or not we need to find a solution on the nuclear debate soon. One way or the other. Our time runs out.

Size matters: Long CSR reports win most green gongs
Longer corporate responsibility reports are more likely to win companies an environmental gong but they are still packed with greenwash and vague references to terminology such as ’sustainability’.

We Need Sustainable Capitalism
Nature does not do bailouts. An article by Al Gore.

Yahoo! Study Finds Growing Green Market
The drive to sustainability is having a broad effect on consumers, with three in four defining themselves as “green,” according to a new survey by Yahoo!.

Green Building Could Triple by 2013 – Report
The U.S. green building market is accelerating at a dramatic rate. The value of green building construction starts was up five-fold from 2005 to 2008 (from $10 billion to $36-$49 billion), and could triple by 2013, reaching $96-$140 billion, according to a new report.

Picture Credit: huntz

Yesterday I came across the latest CSR/Sustainability Review from Cadbury in the UK. You know, Chocolate, etc…..
They had a history of good reporting so I thought lets take a look and do a report review.
The first thing I noticed was the web address: http://www.DearCadbury.com. Sounds interesting… Sounds very engaging. Good start.

Then it got even better. I saw a totally interactive site instead of a normal website with left hand side navigation, etc. They even have sound effects. Now this is getting better by the minute I thought.
Once you get on the website there different ways to navigate. You can either go and explore if you want to browse, if you know your stuff as they say then you can go take a look at the hard facts or you can you can view the accessible version of the review.
Quick verdict: Very nice website in my opinion. Well worth checking out.

So here we with a more detailed report review on the basis of this rating system. I started this rating system to make reports more comparible.

Detailed Review:

Reporting Period
10/10
Cadbury reports annually. This is best practice. Well done. Full marks.

Topics & Clarity
8/10 points
They have addressed the topics I would expect them to talk about. What I am missing some more corporate information communicated in a different way. Examples would be the demerger information. In this case you only have a disclaimer. It would made more sense to talk about this more proactively on the site. But otherwise well done.

Reporting Of The Material Issues
9/10 points
Very detailed but not too detailed and at the same time well presented. Especially for the different set of stakeholders by acknowledging that there are two main visitor groups. So called “explorers” and “ professionals”.

Reporting On Performance Indicators?
8/10 points
Again. Very good. They differentiate between different audiences. Facts for the professionals and contect for the explores. I particularily like the indicator fact sheet.

Reporting According To The GRI G3?
7/10 points
Yes they are but they are only providing information in the professionals area. This could have been   communicated better in the explorer area as well in my opinion.

Reference To Other Parts Of Their Website
5/10 points
Well this is not really happening as this is a stand alone microsite. Only with the link to the corporate website on the top right hand side. And the other navigation is not really useful in my opinion as it only traces back to where you have been on the previous pages. This would need some improvement.

Which Communication Tools Are They Using?
6/10 points
A lot of communication tools are being used but only the ones for interactivity. They play a major part but the tools for navigation for example are no really there. And the sitemap is not linked to the content. But I really like the video integration on the other hand.

CSR Report Contact: An Actual Contact person or Just An Email Address?
5/10 points
Well they are not giving out a name but they are engaging more then many others in the “What do you think?” section. I like the approach but providing real contact details would have been better.

Do They Provide Information What They May Have Omitted?
2/10 points
Not as fair as I can see. But they score 2 points for giving such an extensive overview of their “How we are doing” pages. That is at least a start.

Assurance: Has The CSR Review been Assured By An External Auditor?
4/10 points
Cadbury are not using third party assurance providers this year but therefore have chosen to use stakeholder feedback, a Forum for the Future statement and some feedback form sustainability professionals as their “assurance” process. I think this is not the right approach as it does not really show that the data, etc has been independently been verified. Why I do I think that? Well, data is data and needs to be checked by a third party otherwise data can be manipulated. A third independent party has alwys given reassurance to stakeholders that the data is really correct. I am not saying that the data is incorrect. I am merely saying that the reliability of the data presented should have been backed up by a third party assurance.

Total points for the Cadbury 2007/2008 Sustainability / CR Review:

64/100 points

Overall Opinion:

This report just cries out “STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT” Well done Cadbury. This is state of the art Sustainability and CSR Reporting. But I think there is one big drawback of this report. And that is the context for the professionals. All documents are downloadable but they are not viewable on the screen like a normal website. You always download it and this becomes very annoying when you visist the site more often. I also think that they should had an external assurance provider and a better navigation on the site.

But do not get me wrong. This is a great review with a real Web 2.0 appeal. This is the future of reporting in my opinion.

This week has seen a lot of interesting news items on CSR and Sustainability. The most interesting stories I came across where the first and second stories below. Namely on the link of effective management and sustainability governance and the research on CSR reporting done by KPMG study mentioned in the second article.

Here are the Top 5 of this week:

New research confirms link between corporate responsibility and improved financial performance
New research released today by Business in the Community (BITC) reveals a statistically significant link between effective management and governance of environmental and social issues and financial performance.

Sustainability Reporting Grows Dramatically Among Multinationals
The number of large multinational companies reporting corporate responsibility (CR) data has risen dramatically over the last three years, with vast majority doing so because of ethical reasons, according to new research from KPMG.

Global Investors Issue $4T Incentive for Sustainability
A powerful group of global investors has launched an initiative to call on almost 9,000 listed companies to sign-up to international standards on human rights, the environment and anti-corruption measures.

Future of green is not so black, say some
The deepening economic crisis may appear to be the perfect storm for environmentalism, but many in and around the green movement contend the opposite, seeing in it a time of opportunity.

U.N. Set to Spur Global Green Market
The United Nations Environment Programme launched the Green Economic Initiative last week to shift the global economy toward environmentally friendly investments in order to create jobs and address climate change.

This is the first review of a CSR report and I will follow a clear format every time. I will have a headline with the key factor that is being reviewed followed by the text and a 1 out 10 points rating. At the moment I have 10 review points in total. This review is not intended to be academic or systematic but rather a good look into the topics and issues that matter for you as the reader and stakeholder. In the end every individual has a different opinion. This is mine.

I am also following one important premise: Keep it short and simple.

So here we go.

The 2007/2008 CSR Report of AllianceBoots – a large is a leading international pharmacy-led health and beauty group in the UK.
CSR Report URL: AllianceBoots CSR Report 2007/2008

Reporting Period
10/10
Alliance Boots reports annually. This is best practice. Well done.

Topics & Clarity
7/10 points
The categorization of the four areas of reporting in: Marketplace, Environment, Workplace and Community is very rigid and really not very innovative. This would need to be changed to provide more stakeholder focused information in my opinion. Best practice shows that this is not the ideal way of structuring a CSR report.
But this is a globally accepted approach to categorize your activities in this manner. Not the best choice in my opinion but still worth 7 out of 10 as they are showing that they approach CSR in a structured fashion.

Reporting Of The Material Issues
5/10 points
They have pretty much included all material issues in their business but the discussion is not extensive enough to give full marks. Addressing all the topics is one thing. Discussing them in an appropriate way is another.

Reporting Of Performance Indicators
4/10 points
Alliance Boots has chosen to report on their performance from last year to this. This is a shame as they should thrive for reporting that includes previous years as well. This would have given the user a better indication how they are doing in the long run. In terms of where the performance is reporting is Alliance Boots okay but not really special. They have a special performance section in the navigation and a 2007/08   in every category. But this is not useful in my opinion. Especially as the seperate performance section is not extensive enough to provide appropriate insides in their performance.

Reporting According To The GRI G3
8/10
Very extensive and well presented. This is best practice. The only thing that is missing are the comments. This would have given us more insights.

Reference To Other Parts Of Their Website
5/10
The important thing here is to provide further links inside the specific CSR sections to other places on the corporate website. This is not the case with this report. 5 points because this is a micro site within the corporate website which is a start to linking it within the website.

Which Communication Tools Are They Using?
2/10
Another weak point in my opinion. They are not using anything in terms of communication tools. Not even a feedback page. 2 points for having a micro site and not just an integration in their corporate website.

CSR Report Contact: An Actual Contact person or Just An Email Address?
0/10
Just a anonymous email. Not a good idea.

Do They Provide Information What They May Have Omitted?
0/10
I have not seen anything stating that they might have omitted something. I think this is a must

Assurance: Has The CSR Report been Assured By An External Auditor?
0/10
No assurance. This is not good. Their stakeholders will ask themselves as a consequence: How credible is this report? Are they telling us the truth?

Total points for the AllianceBoots 2007/2008 CSR Report:

41/100

Overall Opinion: The report is not bad but not good either. Just below average. And when we take a look at the reports of AllianceBoots over the previous years (CSR Report 2006) then we need to ask them what their intention with this latest report is. They are definitely taking a step back with this report in my opinion.

While being on holiday I had good idea for a new blog category and series. Each week (if possible) I am going to write a review of either a new or interesting sustainability report or website I have come across.
Sustainability reports and the sustainability websites of organisations are getting more and more sophisticated and complex as they are increasingly seen as being a key communication tool for organisations across the globe. They usually include information on their environmental, social and some economic performance.
I will start with the first company next week.
Before starting I wanted to provide everyone with a rough guide to sustainability reporting and what to look for when you either read a sustainability report or when browsing the sustainability section of a company’s website.

What To Look For In A Sustainability Report

• What is the time span of the reporting period? Annually or bi-annually? Companies that take reporting on sustainability serious usually report on an annual basis
• What are the topics they report on? Are these topics really important topics or just window dressing?
  Are they providing a lot of stories and case studies? Stories and case studies bring you closer to the people and challenges the organisation faces.
• Do they have a set of key performance indicators (KPI)? What are they and have the reported on these before? KPIs are either numbers or qualitative indicators that provide comparibility over a period of time for the companies. If a company has defined a set of indicators and report on these over years than this is a good sign that they know what they are doing.
• Do they use the GRI G3 principles? If yes what is their rating? The GRI is the Global Reporting Initiative and they developed a very sophisticated set of principles as part of a reporting framework every company should report on. Reporting according to the GRI is a must if you want to produce a respected report. Altough it needs to be said that for smaller organisations the GRI is not always useful as it is very extensive. GRI is most useful multi-nationals in my opinion.
• Do they refer to their website? If not then they are missing the trick of interactivity
• Do they have a contact person in their report or just an email address? An essential part of stakeholder engagement in my opinion.

What To Look For On Their Corporate Sustainability Website

• All of the above
• Do they have a standalone sustainability report or do they only provide the information on this website? Both ways can be successful if you have the stakeholder in mind.
• Do they provide regular updates of their key performance indicators or any other information? An essential factor for interactivity and communication.
• Are they trying to engage with you as the stakeholder and viewer of the website or are they purely relaying company information?

These are just some of the questions a good sustainability report and website should answer.

I will starting next week to use these and more questions to see whether the particular report is delivering value to you the reader and stakeholder.
Next weeks report will be the AllianceBoots 2007/08 Corporate Social Responsibility Report if you want to have a sneak preview.

Photo Credit: B_Tal