In this post, Elaine analyzes the GRI’s own sustainability report, asking what extent GRI Stakeholders should be content with a report about direct impacts and outputs (the things that the GRI is saying, doing, using) versus a report about the outcomes the GRI can reasonably claim to have influenced.
In this post Elaine focuses on the importance of critically reviewing the organization’s sustainability reporting by posing and then speaking to a series of questions that focus in on various aspects of how to evaluate the current state of an organizations sustainability reporting.
In this post Elaine gives some examples of successful sustainability goals and examples of goals that fall short of the mark, arguing that reporting needs to address what companies WILL do not just what they HAVE done. This post seeks to give insight on what is the right way for companies to establish sustainability goals.
In this post Elaine writes about this just released comprehensive review by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) of what it has been doing between July 2009 and June 2010. It covers such topics and events as the well attended third GRI conference in Amsterdam in May 2010where the GRI announced its goal that large and medium sized companies should by 2015 be required to report on their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance. It goes on to cover in greater detail the various specifics that are included in this GRI review.
In this post, Elaine describes the new Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 3.1 guidelines covering the new GRI Technical Protocol. The 3.1 guidelines are a stepping stone to the big promise of G4 in 2013 and address just three specific aspects of the current G3 framework relating to: community impacts, human rights and gender equality. The post then goes into more detailed commentary and explanation on each of these three issues.
In this post Elaine gives her take on the latest slew of industry sector sustainability reports increasingly being published by various industry associations, ranging from cattle growers to consumer electronic and every where in between. She notes that they tend to be oriented towards good news marketing oriented material, but they can give you a good overview of the issues in a particular sector.
Twitter has done a great deal for CSR communications. The social network brings CSR leaders closer,facilitates networking, as well as partnership creation, and dealmaking. Twitter gets the news and information out about CSR conferences out to a larger audience, as well as being the absolute best source of CSR news. CSR reports are always announced on Twitter and it is used as a CSR jobs recruitment platform too. It is also used to promote brands, customer service, or to announce new products and services, which all these link to CSR as well. This is all helping to create greater interest in the CSR body of knowledge. Ultimately, Twitter makes CSR info accessible to more people and it is changing the way people view it.
This post poses the question whether or not reporting is a waste of time and then continues by showing three varying examples of where the GRI reporting is incomplete in very important ways and does not include critical data that is needed in order for the report to give a clear and actual picture of what kinds of waste are being generated and how they are being handled (or not handled). Elaine concludes by providing an example of what she feels is a GRI report, by Vestas, that provides clear numbers, clear narrative, clear graphics, clear reporting, in conformance with EN22 performance indicator.
Over the next few years sustainability reporting is going to be going through some major evolutions. The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) is scheduled to launch its new G4 reporting framework by 2013. For those who may not be sustainability experts the GRI’s current G3 framework is the de facto single reporting standard in the world. The G4 is an evolution of the G3 framework that includes new sustainability issues which have emerged more visibly during the last five years since the G3 was developed in 2006. This post discusses the new G4 GRI reporting framework and makes the point that it is an opportunity to raise the threshold for all sustainability reports.
