FabianPattberg.com

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?

The 2009 Sustainability Reporting season is gaining momentum. More and more companies now start to publish their Sustainability Reports looking back at their hot topics, strategy, goals and key performance indicators of 2008.

That is why I started to have a closer look at some Sustainability Reports and listed the most interesting reports here today.

Here are the most interesting Sustainability Reports I have seen during 2009 so far:

Microsoft
Next to the short print report Microsoft has most of its information on the Web. A good move in my opinion. Link to the Report

Adidas
Interesting report with some useful case studies. Link to the Report

Novo Nordisk
The ever-green in the Sustainability reporting world has delivered another good report. Link to the Report

Standard Chartered
Interesting report with a good overview on the relevant topics of this UK-based bank. Link to the Report

Henkel
Very informative and colorful report. Worth checking out. Link to the Report

Picture Credit: kate e. did