Crowd Trends in Sustainability Reporting

The human impact on climate change is undeniable, Crowd, a marketing advisory firm, reported on the best practice solutions for sustainability reporting.

The importance of sustainability reporting

While Governments have introduced laws and guidelines that force individuals to behave more responsibly like plastic bag charges and recycling schemes, more is needed. Every citizen must make lifestyle decisions that factor in sustainability, but businesses need to take more accountability.

They are responsible for the majority of greenhouse gas emissions and their contribution to global warming, 100 companies have contributed 71% of earth’s greenhouse gases since 1988. Many companies struggle to get started and many organisations have been set up to systemise sustainability reporting.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has come out as the leader with 80% of the world’s largest 250 companies using GRI standards and nearly 14,000 organisations in total. The GRI is a non-profit that aims to aid organisations of all sizes provide information on their environmental performance.

However, research shows that even when GRI guidelines are followed closely, the resultant report fails to resonate with the intended audience. As Crowd determines the reasons for this are the most prevalent content in these reports is not motivating or inspiring to stakeholders, the content is not original or memorable and the tone of storytelling is not in line with the brand vision.

So as can be expected the challenge is to make these reports interesting and inspirational to contribute to one’s brand reputation. The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals were adopted by 193 companies in 2015.

They provide a plan to all countries to end poverty and spur economic growth while protecting the planet, the SDGs represent the first time the private sector was included as a partner in reaching the UN goals. However, the SDGs’ intent is to mitigate, it can be hard for organisations to be clear about how they respond to these issues and their impact.

Although organisations are encouraged to adopt the goals, it should be recognised that they were written for member states and not companies. The SDGs represent a common language and sense of purpose in terms of the environment.

In a recent PWC study of over 700 multi-national companies, 72% of published sustainability reports mentioned the SDGs, yet just 23% included meaningful KPIs and targets. 31% of published GRI Sustainability Reports mentioned a commitment to SGs.

While public commitments to the SDGs are evident, examples of aligning the SDGs with corporate strategy, supported by initiatives and the investment to realise goals are infrequent. Some starters to improve the effectiveness of your Sustainability Communications, first of all storytelling.

We all know good content is vital to marketing and sustainability, this allows you to tell your customers about the things your company is doing to meet and surpass its CSR obligations. Take your customers on a journey, even if falling short of goals you can demonstrate a commitment to show improvement year by year.

Stories are a great way to bring your business to life and show the real people in your company, customers will see your staff acting in a socially responsible way and this creates a positive impression. Next, relevance, unpacking scientific data around these topics is engaging for many different people, it is not always an easy one-track solution, and information needs to be presented in a relevant and engaging way.

It also has to be presented in a way that is aligned with the brand and corporate vision, a companies’ sustainability performance will become more important in terms of brand equity. Referencing SDGs means that your content is relevant to them, many companies try to adopt all of the SDGs while others simply badge their Sustainability Reports
with the SDGs.

Pick the SDGs most relevant to your organisation and focus on these, unlike GRI reporting standards there is no mandate to report against all of the SDGs. Identifying your key focus areas and also be communicated in a way that has a clear sense of purpose, which will resonate with the target audience, supported by initiatives and results.

Next, ambassadors and advocates, adding personalities to your stories is a great way of bringing authenticity and realism. Your company is made of real people with their own social responsibility concerns and efforts and highlighting these activities in your stories delivers a good and real impression.

Choosing from your staff from the company hierarchy to illustrate how ingrained the CSR area is from the bottom to the top is important, it also gives your brand a ‘face’. Input doesn’t need to be in-depth: supporting statements and imagery which contribute to the themes being discussed are enough to create valuable authenticity.

To read the rest of this report, and learn more about Crowd, check out the link here.