 |
During the past 20 years, sustainable business practices have evolved from being considered eccentric altruistic projects to almost mandatory, well-developed programs with goals and processes defined to achieve specific environmental, social, and economic outcomes. Today, companies are judged by the public, investors, nonprofits, the government, and others based on the breadth, depth and success of their sustainable practices. As a result, the bottom line with any sustainable program is regular reporting including goals and initiatives, successes and failures and your ongoing commitment to continuous improvement.
While many call sustainable practices “good corporate citizenship,” the reality is that they are also key to corporate competitiveness, especially in our global marketplace. In fact, the world’s largest companies are rated on their sustainable activities and graded accordingly. Smaller companies should also be aware that their “sustainable profile” may be considered when seeking capital, wooing top new employees, or bidding on work, especially government projects. Your corporate sustainability can be as important as your financial stability to investors, government, the public, and other firms, so adequate care should be taken when creating sustainability programs and reporting outcomes.
Join us on September 30 for an in-depth webinar, EHS Sustainability: How to Create a Leading Program for Your Organization, on how to implement a successful EHS sustainability program! Register Now
One of the most intrinsic and important elements of corporate sustainability is transparency. Transparency is a mandatory part of sustainable reporting and includes economic, environmental and social impacts within its scope. Transparency also levels the playing field and allows for greater information sharing and consensus building, two things that can only improve sustainable practices for all stakeholders. Moreover, transparency is a key to standardizing sustainability reporting, an effort that is well on its way to helping all businesses become sustainable.
The group at the core of the push to standardize sustainable development reporting is the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), an international nonprofit group dedicated to creating one framework for sustainable reporting worldwide. The GRI recently released the updated version of its Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (also known as the G4 Guidelines), which is designed to assist “organizations of any size, sector, or location.” The publication is available for download at https://www.globalreporting.org/reporting/g4/Pages/default.aspx.
The G4 Guidelines provide an introduction to sustainability reporting and the GRI Reporting Framework, as well as guidance on how to define content, quality of content, and boundaries for reporting. In addition, the G4 Guidelines also review standard disclosures relative to the overall sustainability program from strategy and analysis to management approach and performance indicators. The document also provides comprehensive information about relevant topics such as economics, environmental, and social: labor practices and decent work, human rights, society, and product responsibility.
Developing and implementing an EHS sustainability program is becoming a necessary, and critical, requirement for doing business in the world market. Join us on September 30 for this comprehensive webinar to learn more! Sign Up Now
All of the information in the G4 Guidelines can also be used to reverse engineer your program so that from the beginning, you are implementing a program that is constructed in such a way as to make reporting easier and more meaningful.
The GRI also maintains the Report Disclosure Database, which currently contains sustainability reports for 5,561 organizations. According to the GRI, the service enables users to search the database for companies and their reports, compare sustainability disclosure benchmarks and share your company’s data and successes with others around the world. The Report Disclosure database is available at http://database.globalreporting.org/.
To learn more about sustainability and how you can bring your company up to speed register now for BLR’s upcoming webinar – EHS Sustainability – How to Establish a World-Class Program on September 30, 2013 from 10:30 a.m. -12:00 p.m. PST.