More thoughts on improving CSR reporting…

Having chaired a lot of our conference last week on reporting, I was going to blog with a few thoughts on what I picked up.

But the customers and speakers have said it better than I could.

Here’s an email I just had from Peter Truesdale, an associate director at the consultancy Corporate Citizenship, who came to the event last week:

“I very much enjoyed the Brussels conference especially the debate about GRI. There is quite a bit of mileage left in that one.

Mulling the two days over the following struck me as potentially positive topics for future sessions on reporting:

– Benchmarking in reports: who does it at all, who does it well, why hasn’t it caught on?

– Why do so many reporters fail to give any business sector or business processes context for their reports?

– Brand reporting: given that in many instances the consumer is engaging with a particular brand rather than a particular company, why is there relatively little brand reporting?

– Reporting on the full footprint not just the bit you control: who does it? Who does it well?

– Target setting (especially in the environment): are the targets being set really fit for purpose/stretching? Why are so many targets per unit of production rather than absolute?”

Peter makes some excellent points. Food for thought for you reporting folks out there.