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European sustainability reports lack focus
Ernst & Young performed a research on the quality of sustainability reports of 100 large European companies. The most important conclusion is that in their sustainability reports companies aim to report on all possible sustainability topics and thereby missing the focus on their biggest impacts. In addition the information is unbalanced. Many reports (76%) address positive examples of sustainability initiatives, but fail to report on the real dilemma's.
Embedding
The researchers conclude that the call of Global Reporting Initiative to provide an insight on how sustainability is embedded in the organisational structure is followed in only 30% of the reports. The latest sustainability reports do improve on comparability, readability and reliability.
Trend
Although there are various possibilities for quality improvements for quality, is specialist sustainability reporting Nancy Kamp-Roelands of Ernst & Young satisfied with the trends " It is a fact that an increasing number of companies take sustainability into account in their business operations and see sustainability as something broade than climate change, employee related aspects and social projects. The emphasis moves gradually to embedding sustainability into products and services'. Providing insight into the value creation of sustainability is according to Kamp-Roelands an important next step.
Credit crunch
Kamp-Roelands mentions that the current financial crisis only supports the fact that companies should legitimise themselves. " Unfortunately it is suggested that corporate social responsibility costs too much money during an economic crisis. This is really a misunderstanding. Investing in sustainable development is an important distinguishing characteristic and leads in addition to a competitive advantage also to cost reduction.' Of the 15 countries that were covered in the research, companies in the Netherlands most often disclosed (63%) that sustainability was the responsibility of a member of the board of directors. "This is very hopeful" says Nancy Kamp-Roelands. 'It supports that we take sustainablity more serious.'
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