Trends in online sustainability reporting - new research

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Permalink Reply by Dan Johnson on June 1, 2009 at 1:34pm

Very interesting side. Thanks for sharing.

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Permalink Reply by elaine cohen on June 3, 2009 at 1:53pm

hi, just saw this and at first glance, looks brilliant. As a report writer, assurer and reviewer, and one who is constantly giving talks about reporting, i am always looking for up to date date about trends and highlights. This seems to be a brilliant piece of research. I havent delved into great detail yet, but when i do, and if i have more specific feedback, i wont hesitate to write.

My first take, is that whilst i understand that 40 reports is quite a number to analyse, it is still a drop in the ocean compared to the 3000 or so reports published annually, so i would like to see expansion of the database on a going basis.

There are a number of other themes / reporting trends which i would like to see and regularly look for are (you may have covered some of this so sorry if i am referring to something you already did)
:
(1) the extent to which Companies split data between web and pdf
(2) the extent to which companies publish a looooooong report including pdf as an electronic download, and issue a short summary report sent out as a hard copy
(3) the extent to which companies publish one big report and spin offs for different sectors or issues related to their business, or targeted at different stakeholder groups
(4) the extent to which companies produce their report in more than one language
(5) the extent to which global companies publish local reports with specialised local content
(6) the use of xbrl
(7) use of cd roms to publish reports (or diskonkey? not seen that yet!)

Anyway, so far so good and congratulations on this excellent piece of research.
Would be more than happy to be involved or help in any way if i can.
We are the leading GRI reporting consultants in Israel (our latest A+ report just published here last week).

warm regards
elaine
www.b-yond.biz/en

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Permalink Reply by Ben Richards on June 13, 2009 at 7:45am

Hi Elaine,

Sorry, meant to reply to your specific queries - comments below..!

1) Yep, we include information on this.
2) Didn't look specifically at summary reports in this phase of the research...
3, 4, 5) ...but did look at 'other' reporting, and sources for GRI information (ie, relationship between Sustainability report, Annual report, online policy documents)
6) The first XBRL report wasn't published until the very end of 2008 (after the research period had been published) but we do reference this in the essay on functionality in the Themes & Trends section of the website)
7) And, no, didn't look at this - but haven't seen this in my experience of UK or global reporting - have you?

Thanks again for your comments. And do let me know if anything else occurs to you! Hope you've had some time to read the research too.

Best wishes,

Ben

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Permalink Reply by Ben Richards on June 8, 2009 at 11:06am

Thanks for the comments, Dan and Elaine - much appreciated.

Ben

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Permalink Reply by Carlos Javier Delgado on June 12, 2009 at 8:03pm

Hi Ben. It was a good surprise to find someone who works in the online reporting project from GRI. I'm very interested in triple bottom line reporting. I read about the project a few days ago, but i did not surf the web yet. Be sure i will do.

Just a first and little feedback: sería muy bueno si pudiera leerse también en español, jejejeje (it would be better if could be read in spanish also).

uhm... I would like to colaborate with the project... is there any way to do it?

Regards.

(Note: if you find any mistakes in my text, please correct me. I would really appreciate it).

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Permalink Reply by Ben Richards on June 13, 2009 at 7:41am

Hi Carlos,

Thanks for the feedback! Apologies for the fact that it's not also available in Spanish - I'm afraid the project's resources didn't quite stretch to that.

We're currently looking for any comments about what else people would like to see in future phases of the research - do let me know your thoughts. In terms of collaboration, maybe drop me an email with a bit more about what you do - do you produce triple bottom line reporting?

Also - just to be clear - I don't actually work for GRI (I work for a London-based communications agency, and we produce a lot of reports for clients), but we're working in partnership with GRI on this project.

Thanks again,

Ben
b.richards@ry.com

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Permalink Reply by Ben Richards on June 24, 2009 at 4:57am

Hi Marcus,

The event went really well, thanks.

Much of the discussion came back to the notion of audience - who the report is being produced for - and how this affects how much prominence you give to a technical/specialist tool like an interactive GRI index (or equally, how much you invest in a flashy online report if the it's being produced for technical audiences that want indexed information in a single document - no offence to 'technical audiences'! Feel free to challenge our assumptions here!).

Mallen Baker was at the event, which I think prompted this blog post from him:

http://www.mallenbaker.net/csr/post.php?id=247

We do have mailing lists for CR events - if you'd like to be added, drop me a line at b.richards@ry.com, or otherwise, watch this space.

Thanks for the comment,

Ben

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Permalink Reply by Ben Richards on June 24, 2009 at 6:50am

Precisely - which relates to the point I make over here about quality of information coming before channel consideration:

http://www.developmentcrossing.com/forum/topics/the-coolest-toy-in-...

Ben

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Permalink Reply by Kenneth Westling on June 24, 2009 at 11:31pm

Thanks Ben, I'll take a look at it and give you my thoughts later.

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