16.04.10 - 14:03
by James Osborne
Many CSR managers are scratching their heads wondering what path to take on reporting. As the pressure for greater disclosure mounts, companies are dedicating more time to producing long CSR or sustainability reports and at the same time maintaining burgeoning websites. Usually, the website ends up being an after-product of the report, and it shows.
One way out of this impasse could be the integrated reporting model, which involves combining the traditional annual report with the CSR document. Harvard Business School professor Robert G. Eccles and Grant Thornton partner Michael Krzus recently published a book arguing in favour of this integrated format: One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy (John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, NJ, March 2010).
In their video presentation, the authors predict integrated reporting will become a major trend in the near future. They argue that producing a single document is essential if companies that embed CSR principles and sustainability into their business model are to present a unified narrative to stakeholders. That way, they could provide a systematic account of both financial and non-financial performance in one go.
A similar kind of message is also coming from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which in March released a report saying that the integration of sustainability into mainstream reporting will be the “future hallmark of success”.
Looking at this discussion from the online communications point of view, there are clear advantages in this approach. Aside from the potential for presenting an enriched annual report as an interactive document in HTML, integrated reporting could free CSR teams to focus more on the corporate website as a dynamic, continuous communications tool.
Key, material information would be outlined in the integrated report once a year, leaving the CSR or sustainability section of the website to become the main repository for information on policies, data, news, case studies, etc. Stakeholders know they will be able to use the website to drill down into detailed content that perhaps cannot find space in the main report and to find updates between one annual report and another. (For a related post on this topic, see “From online CSR report to online CSR reporting” from January.)
It is clearly logical that companies embedding CSR into their day-to-day business need to revise their communications to reflect this. But this will surely mean that the relationship between reporting and the corporate website must change too, giving the online channel the priority it deserves as an open, dynamic and versatile medium for CSR communications.
Many CSR managers are scratching their heads wondering what path to take on reporting. As the pressure for greater disclosure mounts, companies are dedicating more time to producing long CSR or sustainability reports and at the same time maintaining burgeoning websites. Usually, the website ends up being an after-product of the report, and it shows.
One way out of this impasse could be the integrated reporting model, which involves combining the traditional annual report with the CSR document. Harvard Business School professor Robert G. Eccles and Grant Thornton partner Michael Krzus recently published a book arguing in favour of this integrated format: One Report: Integrated Reporting for a Sustainable Strategy (John Wiley & Sons Inc., Hoboken, NJ, March 2010).
In their video presentation, the authors predict integrated reporting will become a major trend in the near future. They argue that producing a single document is essential if companies that embed CSR principles and sustainability into their business model are to present a unified narrative to stakeholders. That way, they could provide a systematic account of both financial and non-financial performance in one go.
A similar kind of message is also coming from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which in March released a report saying that the integration of sustainability into mainstream reporting will be the “future hallmark of success”.
Looking at this discussion from the online communications point of view, there are clear advantages in this approach. Aside from the potential for presenting an enriched annual report as an interactive document in HTML, integrated reporting could free CSR teams to focus more on the corporate website as a dynamic, continuous communications tool.
Key, material information would be outlined in the integrated report once a year, leaving the CSR or sustainability section of the website to become the main repository for information on policies, data, news, case studies, etc. Stakeholders know they will be able to use the website to drill down into detailed content that perhaps cannot find space in the main report and to find updates between one annual report and another. (For a related post on this topic, see “From online CSR report to online CSR reporting” from January.)
It is clearly logical that companies embedding CSR into their day-to-day business need to revise their communications to reflect this. But this will surely mean that the relationship between reporting and the corporate website must change too, giving the online channel the priority it deserves as an open, dynamic and versatile medium for CSR communications.