// By Rebecca Short

According to a new report released by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) titled “Count Me In–The Readers’ Take on Sustainability Reporting”, 90 percent of those who’ve read company sustainability reports admit that their opinions of a company change after viewing the report. Of that group, 85 percent said they had a more positive perception of a company after reading its report.

The study, commissioned by GRI and undertaken by KPMG Netherlands and UK-based SustainAbility, found that publishing information on sustainability performance has a strong positive impact on the reader’s perceptions of a company and adds value to the brand. Wim Bartels of KPMG, who co-authored the report with SustainAbility’s Judy Kuszewski, noted that audiences exist for sustainability reports, and they are influenced by them.

Those who read the reports identified themselves as individuals or members of the business, not-for-profits and investment communities. By and large, the readers agreed on the elements that should be in a report. Of particular importance, according to the readers, is a company’s ability to establish a link between its sustainability strategy and its overall business strategy. The readers also gave priority to reports that tell a balanced story, reporting on both the good and the not-so-good news. The readers viewed this as a vital way to build trust and credibility.

“Openness in disclosing economic, environmental and social impacts can give companies a competitive edge, but people aren’t fools,” said Ernst Ligteringen, Chief Executive of GRI. “They read these reports with a purpose and they want the truth, and particularly the whole truth—not just selective reporting where their performance is good.”

The inaugural survey was conducted in parallel to the Readers’ Choice Awards, a new approach designed to give readers a voice in this rapidly growing field.

The winning reports, as selected by readers in eight categories, were as follows:

Best Report: Civil Society Readers’ Choice and All Stakeholder Groups Award—Petrobras (Brazil)

Petrobras, short for Petróleo Brasileiro S.A., is a semi-public energy company headquartered in Rio de Janeiro. Almost 200 scores were cast on this report, of which 60 scores came from Civil Society organizations.

Best Report: Media Gas Natural—SDG (Spain)

The Gas Natural group is an energy services multinational whose activities focus on supplying, distributing and commercializing natural gas in Spain, Latin America, Italy and France, where it has 10.6 million customers. The media assigned this report one of the highest scores in the readership categories; it scored especially high in materiality.

Best Report: Financial Markets—ABN Amro India (India)

Part of the ABN Amro group, the ABN AMRO India commenced operations in India in 1920 with a branch in Kolkata. Today the bank has 28 branches in India, and the operations have expanded to 21 cities. Receiving almost 100 overall scores, the report scored highest on quality.

Best Report: Employees—ITC (India)

Almost 900 employees voted for their own company in the Readers’ Choice Awards. Readers Choice, ITC limited, is one of India’s foremost private sector companies and is ranked among the World’s Best Big Companies and Asia’s Fabulous 50. ITC has a diversified presence in cigarettes, hotels, paperboards, packaging, agri-business, packaged foods, safety matches and greeting cards.

Best Report: Non-Business Organization—Fundacion Emprendimientos Rurales Los Grobo (Argentina)

This Foundation of Rural Business Ventures is part of the Grupo los Grobo. It is a non-profit organization that coordinates and stimulates the network of social capital and business ventures in the rural environment of Argentina. Through this it promotes and develops the rural environment, its culture and its people.

Best Report: Not-So-Big Business—Frigoglass (Greece)

Hellenic-based global corporation, specializing in the design, manufacture and marketing of Ice Cold Merchandisers (ICM’s) and the production of Glass Containers, primarily targeting the beverage industry. They have production facilities in ten countries on three continents. The company scored particularly high on the Quality of the report, which indicates high comparability, accuracy, clarity and balance.

Best Report: Non-OECD Company—TGC-5 (Russia)

TGC-5 is a heat electric generation plant situated in the northeast part of Russia, a region lacking electric power. It is the main electric power company and the leader of heating producing companies in the region. The report scored highest on Materiality and Completeness. TGC-5 is one of the four reports from Russia that were entered in the Readers’ Choice Awards.

Reader’s Choice Awards
To select the winners of each award, GRI decided to recruit the help of everyone who reads sustainability reports, not just a select panel of judges. The readers voted for the best reports based on their own needs and preferences. Over 1,700 readers from 70 countries participated in the scoring process. The readers scored 800 reports from 50 countries and based their decisions on five criteria:

• Materiality: The report covers the issues that are most relevant and important to the company/organization
• Stakeholder inclusiveness: The report is focused on the most important stakeholders and addresses their concerns
• Sustainability context: The degree to which the report explains the company/organization’s own performance in relation to data about broader sustainability trends
• Completeness: The scope of the report and how well it enables readers to assess the organization’s performance
• Quality: The comparability, accuracy, timeliness, clarity, reliability, balance and quality of the information provided in the report

Readers were able to assign unique weights to these criteria so that their scores reflected how well they thought the report met the criteria and which criteria were most important to them. Each report gained a Final Report Score; the average weights of the criteria multiplied by the average score readers assigned them.

Please click here for more information and links to individual reports.

Rebecca Short is a Conference Media and Communications Coordinator for GRI.