Sustainability Report | FabianPattberg.com

Tag Archives - sustainability report

Step 1 in starting our first very own CSR / Sustainability report

December 5, 20124:45 pm

I am running a small business and decided to embarked on the journey to collate, write and publish our first ever CSR / Sustainability report in 2013.

This in itself is quite a challenge. We are working in the defense and consulting sector at the moment but are in the process of extending our expertise into the CSR / Sustainability sector.

The reason for this transition is pretty simple. (1) My main business experience is in CSR / Sustainability and (2) this is the business sector I am most passionate about. I will therefore lead this transition over the course of 2013/2014 while also extending our existing business.

One of these elements of a successful transition in my view is to go through the process of producing our very own CSR / Sustainability report.

Todays post is about the very first step in the long CSR / Sustainability reporting process for a first time reporter:

Step 1: Planning what you want to achieve with your CSR / Sustainability report

Before you start writing your first email requesting data of any kind for your CSR / Sustainability report, make sure you and all key people involved in the reporting process have clearly defined what you would like to achieve with your report. This might sound as an obvious action but you will be surprised how many organizations simply start to “do” their first CSR / Sustainability report without really setting themselves a clearly defined goal.

Step 1: Answer this question together with your team or / and the people responsible in your organization:

What do I want to achieve with my first CSR / Sustainability report and how do I go about reaching this goal?

Once you have talked this through with your team and the responsible people you will see that the plan on how to go about reaching this goal is not that daunting anymore. This one short exercise with will make the upcoming months so much easier. Promised.

I will go through this step 1 with my employees in the next few days. Have you done the same for your CSR / Sustainability report already?

My next post will continue with the step 2. Clarifying what our key messages will be.

Picture Credit: Eleaf

One stop shop for the Sustainability / CSR Report production? I don’t think so…

March 24, 20115:24 pm

14 Comments

Chris Milton sent me this press release link yesterday published by a company called Gaia Metrics in association with CSRWire advertising a great new way to reduce your sustainability / CSR report costs by 90%. Wow, I thought. Lets check this out. Have they developed or found something new I did now existed?

This is what the first paragraph of the press release reads:

“Gaia Metrics announced today the availability of CSR QuickStart™, which dramatically reduces the time, complexity and cost of finding and assembling the words and numbers that populate a Corporate Social Responsibility or Sustainability (CSR) Report. By automating the process of collecting relevant CSR Report data, CSR QuickStart™ reduces the time to do so from months to just days, and cuts typical costs by 90 percent or more.”

I stopped reading after that paragraph to be honest. You know why? This product is simply useless in my view and experience working on these kind of reports. What quality can you expect by this automated process of information gathering? Not much is my answer.

My view of Sustainability / CSR Reports
Sustainability / CSR reports are so much more then just figures and words. Reports provide you with a view into the inner workings of the business, its values and so much more. This kind of report which would be produced with the above mentioned service in my view can only be a ‘rip off’ of a companies Sustainability / CSR practice.

Are we at this point in the Sustainabilty / CSR field where the practitioners try to lower the costs of a report with all tools available no matter how useless they are? I surely hope not…….

Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/howardlake/4850758742

Commenting on the upcoming Guardian Sustainability report

March 4, 20114:06 pm

0 Comments

I love commenting as you will have noticed by now. I was therefore really happy to provide a comment about the upcoming The Guardian Sustainability report.

Jo Confino kindly nudged me again today to squeeze out some ideas and comments. After a busy and hectic week I finally found the time today to sit down and align my ideas in order to provide some useful and constructive feedback.

Here is what I wrote:
First of all thank you for including such a nice reference about my experience of the last report into the post Jo. My headaches have past obviously but I must say a lot of reports still give me pretty bad headaches. So lets try to make this a better report. ;-)
Here are some of the main issues I would like to see in the next report (some are new and the ones that you are already doing work on I would like you to continue the good work):

Reporting issues:

Explain to us in more detail why you report the way you report. In my view you can never do this good enough.
Especially the rolling updates need to be explained in more detail.
Give us more details why you changed to stop doing something as a business and why you started something new in order to understand the rationale.
I am always going on about this but try to tell us as much as possible in a single storyline. Pure facts are boring and not many people can put them in context.

Topical issues

Give us an idea of how the guardian helps us make sense of the ever changing world. Regime changes and constant global turmoil are keeping our attention occupied so much these days that the Sustainability report needs to be more than just numbers and words. It needs to be about what you are doing and what has changed. The report needs to enable us as stakeholders to see through the Guardian’s eyes in my view.
The importance of Wikileaks as explained by the first commentator here.
Show us how you are part of making Sustainability and CSR more popular across the globe by being as transparent as possible. Engage us and make us like the Guardian even more.

This is what I can come up with at the moment. I hope this helps.

What would you like to see in the next Guardian Sustainability report? I am sure Jo from the Guardian would be very happy to have more feedback. This is the link to the article where you can provide feedback: The Guardian feedback

Report Opinion: The latest Guardian News and Media Sustainability Report

July 9, 20101:24 pm

4 Comments

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.

Integrated Reporting: Three points to consider

June 7, 20104:23 pm

1 Comment

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

Review of the 2008 Procter & Gamble Sustainability Report

March 18, 20095:54 pm

9 Comments

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.

Sustainability and CSR – The Importance Of The Next Turn

November 10, 20087:49 pm

2 Comments

While the days are getting shorter and the first wave of sore throats and constant coughing by everyone around you is nearly over the new reality of an economy in recession (yes I have written the horrible r-word) is becoming more and more obvious.
Now you are thinking…….oh not again…….I can not hear it anymore.

Don’t worry this post is not meant as a doom and gloom message. Rather a short note on how (and why) we can ensure that our companies still do their bit when it comes to sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

In my opinion the upcoming recession or at least economic downturn is a not as bad when it comes to sustainability and the responsible business practice as long as we consumers and employees ensure that companies keep doing what they are doing and improve gradually over time.

Here is where I come from. Companies in the last decade have only seen booming times and mostly rising budgets for their sustainability and CSR activities. With that rosy outlook sustainability policies, strategies, actions, etc where fairly easy to push through on company level. If they always had an impact is another question.

Now this is changing. Companies need to consider the cost implications and „ direct benefits“ when it comes to justifying the costs for a Sustainability Report, redevelopment of a strategy, next implementation phase, you name it. And I think this is a good development.

Mainly because throwing a lot of money at something is only likely to help in the short run but not necessarily in the long run. It helps you to get started but especially in the Sustainability sector it will not bring you very far. What is needed is a constant engagement with your stakeholders and proper business management when it comes to sustainability and CSR within a company. This is the only successful way of imbedding Sustainability/CSR within a business.

Having that in mind, the next 12-24 months will show how sustainability and CSR within companies will survive or change with the the challenge of lower budgets, less internal influence due to cost cutting and less of a hype by the public as each and everyone needs to start looking out for themselves.

Here is what we as consumers and employees should ask for in responsible business practice and how (if at all) companies are adressing these issues/topics:

Are companies still looking to clean up their act when it comes to supply chains, child labour and sweat shops?
How important is the discussion of organic food, GM food now? Is this still a discussion item in the news? Or has everyone forgotten about this?
What about fairtrade? Same as above. Is this something companies now still talk and do something about?
Are we seeing an increase in companies reporting on their performance when it comes to sustainability?
What about the possiblities for employees to do something for their local community? Is this still being supported by companies that where marketing with their social competence?
Do you hear more about Stakeholder Engagement from companies? Or is it purely marketing communications and no dialogue anymore?
Do we see more Communications Managers address the topic of Sustainability/CSR within an organisation now rather then the Sustainability/CSR person? If that is the case then be alert. This is a sign of lower importance in my experience.

These are just some of the questions we as consumers and employees need to start asking companies in the next 12-24 months in order to see where the sustainability/CSR efforts are going. If we keep quiet a lot of what we have achieved with the sustainability movement will be lost and companies will go about their daily business as if here has never been a sustainability and CSR movement.
History has shown that letting companies do what they want will not be successful when it comes to Sustainability and responsible business practice. We have made a good start into the sustainable business future. Now we need to focus on keeping this momentum and act as watchdogs for the responsible business practices of business.

We need to move forward, not backwards. But businesses can not do this on their own, they need our help.

Picture Credit: immarkcz

Top 5 Sustainability & CSR News Stories this week – 31.10.2008

October 31, 20089:21 am

0 Comments

top5 Top 5 Sustainability & CSR News Stories this week 31.10.2008 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.

Review of the AllianceBoots 2007/08 Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Report

October 23, 20088:47 pm

6 Comments

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.