|
CSR
CSR
18,864 members Member
Laurence Webb
Corporate Responsibility Executive at Tesco PLC
Top Contributor
I'm currently working on Tesco's next Corporate Responsibility report.
Does anyone have advice on best practice, either content or design? What will make you read a CSR report rather than just dismiss it as a PR exercise?
Thanks in advance!
Pending Submissions
Peter Burgess
Peter Burgess commented on How to make a CSR report engaging?
CSR reporting is always going to be a challenge until there are rigorous meaningful metrics about socio-economic and environmental impact just as there are for business profit. There is efficiency in the way the business community accounts for and reports profit. There is nothing like it in the way CSR is accounted for and reported.
In the corporate financial reports there are numbers that in most cases have been independently validated (by a professional firm of auditors) and these numbers are embellished and made more 'interesting' with stories and anecdotes. It is however, the numbers that have the weight and gravitas.
In CSR reporting, there are interesting stories and anecdotes, but the numbers are missing. Serious investors and analysts are going to discount CSR reports of this type, and in my view, it is high time the CSR community got to grips with this issue. None of the better known initiatives (such as the GRI, the IR initiative, GIIN/IRIS and others) have handled this, though I believe they are trying to go in the right direction.
My own work in this arena is progressing. The TrueValueMetrics' Multi Dimension Impact Accounting (MDIA) initiative will make it possible to account for and report impact on people and planet using a data architecture that draws on many conventional accounting constructs updated for technology of the 21st century. The work is not yet ready for 'prime time', but I believe we are going in the right direction.
It is encouraging that more and more major companies are wanting to do CSR reporting. It would be good if there was a good approach already established, efficient and widely accepted.
Peter Burgess - TrueValueMetrics
Multi Dimension Impact Accounting less…
|
