Corporate sustainability reporting

A new report by Futerra, SustainAbility, KPMG and GRI (the Global Reporting Initiative) presents the results of a survey of authors and readers of corporate sustainability reports. 


They key findings of the report are:

• Reporting is becoming more global, with more than 70% of the readers surveyed coming from Brazil (obviously not a random sample!)
• Reporting is being used to improve the internal processes of companies 
• The majority of authors of the reports cited stakeholder engagement as a reason for reporting, while fewer than 20% of readers cited engagement as a reason for reading reports
• Few readers believed companies were fully reporting their sustainability progress, although most believed that companies were reporting what they thought was important.
• Reporting was not being used to compare company performance
• The majority of readers believed that the use of standards improved the quality and transparency of reporting.
• A variety of internal and external measures of success were important for both readers and authors
• Sustainability reports are used for a variety of reasons, such as informing product/service choice, investment decisions and sharing information
• Almost half the readers had shared their views of the report with others
• Sustainability reporting leads to changed behaviour within companies and the people reading the reports with actions related specifically to the company, but also relating to broader sustainability issues

See also an article by one of the authors in the Guardian.


via Dr Saffron O'Neill.