Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated…
Not mine personally of course, but the demise of corporate responsibility (CR) or corporate sustainability (CS) reporting.
I can’t count the times recently that I’ve heard statements like, ‘CR reporting isn’t working’, ‘there’s no return on our investment’, ‘nobody reads them’, ‘they’re no use to me I get my information from the FT’. A comms lady in a large company even called us to ask if we would review their report, but ‘not from the perspective of CR experts who we don’t care about’. Clearly there’s some frustration in the air.
ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) has been a loyal standard bearer for CS reporting and was first into the awards field (around 1993) with the once prestigious ACCA award. Originally the vision of Roger Adams, an accountant with a broader than average outlook, the award blossomed over more than a decade, which began with less than fifty companies publishing reports and grew to today when according to our friends at Corporate Register there are 5,632 . This year, however, the UK award is cancelled, in ACCA’s words because:
“After a disappointingly low level of entries for 2009, ACCA felt that it was not viable to run a credible awards scheme with such a small sample size so decided to cancel for 2009. ACCA can bring more benefit to the reporting and sustainability community by focussing on other planned reporting and sustainability work as well as the recently launched ACCA Carbon Accountancy Futures Theme. Preparation for COP15 is also a key area that ACCA would like to concentrate on, which would have coincided with the Awards.”
More evidence of the death of reporting. Err no.
Miss World was once one of the most watched global awards programmes – quite an influence on my youth. Although invented in Britain, today you must travel to Venezuela or South Africa to see it on a mainstream TV channel and it’s not available in the UK at all. Evidence of the demise in interest in female beauty? Yeah right.
ACCA like Miss World failed to move with the times. Their award was stuck in a narrow view of what a CS report should be – as Miss World perpetuated a narrow view of what a woman should be. ACCA’s ‘perfect ten’ report was so complex and inaccessible that only the same few companies could win. And they did over and over. BT has a whole shelf full, Novo Nordisk must be worrying about the carbon footprint of theirs. Not a good strategy for encouraging participation, innovation and excellence.
A prediction: GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) will suffer the same fate.
But do not confuse the departure of the administrators with the death of the organism. It’s part of the natural cycle of development and improvement that we need to keep CS reporting current and relevant.
Upheaval is a good thing. The day sustainability reports are easy and uncontroversial is the day when they have been reduced to the status of annual reports and company press releases. Two of the least effective forms of communication ever invented.
Fortunately we are a long way from that. If you’re working in CR/CS you’re used to frustration even controversy – or you soon will be. It’s not going to be an easy journey from today’s unsustainable society and use of the environment to one that is self sustaining. So the idea that individual companies can articulate how to make this transition elegantly, with recent performance data appended and some compelling local case studies illustrating the ‘can do’ culture, is frankly laughable. Get real – the expectations of a CS report are unachievable.
Our company, Context, helped 27 companies plan, research and write their CS reports last year. Some are excellent and others are flawed. But all are useful documents without which the company and those outside who are interested in it would be much poorer.
For the company, the benefit begins long before publication. The process of identifying the important issues, working out how to measure them and agreeing a strategy for better performance involves many people in different jobs. Of course they could all do this without the spur of the report deadline – but would they – would you? The process of compiling a CS report is a major factor in pushing sustainability within companies. That’s why it’s so fascinating and rewarding.
For the external person interested in the company (stakeholder in CS vernacular) there is a huge amount to be learned from the report. And that applies equally to the best reports and the worst ones. If you’re reading about a company that hasn’t acknowledged key issues, that can’t sensibly demonstrate that it is in control of performance and has a hazy vision of how sustainability will impact its business – what have you learned? Loads.
That’s why CS reporting is valuable. Why standards and awards are irrelevant and why frustration is good. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.
Sage
