people, profit, planet reporting?

You may have noticed by my posts that I have been hanging out with the Business Intelligence folks quite a bit these days.  The other day we got into quite the discussion regarding reporting standards.  At first we began our usual debate with respect to the convergence/adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards (”IFRS“) which is a hot topic as the conversion date approaches.  But then a fairly senior person raised:

reporting standards aren’t just about profits - what about people and planet? what’s your position on the Global Reporting Initiative (”GRI“)?

The what? The GRI Sustainability Reporting Guidelines/Framework (G3).  Essentially, the GRI folks are trying to establish the same rigor in standards for reporting sustainability, economic and environmental performance as exist for financial reporting.  By creating a common framework they promote transparency, comparable performance indicators, best practices and guidance for interpretation regardless of size, sector, or location.  As well, it’s not just qualitative, the GRI guidelines are also quantitative which is why my BI friends are so interested: another dashboard/score card of key performance indicators.

why would a company voluntarily sign up for more corporate governance and reporting?  these are costly endeavors.

Today shareholders want more than just high returns.  They want to know that the companies they invest in are taking steps towards protecting the environment and making their businesses more sustainable all while supporting solid human rights practice and the local community.  By providing this information the companies are keeping the consumer well informed and differentiating their practices from their competitors (the peer pressure approach to best practices).

Checking out our industry you can see Apple has adopted the standard and incorporated it into their environmental practices which can be found here.  So has IBM, HP, Intel, and Microsoft to name a few.  As you can see, there is a bit of a lag in the information in some cases and the presentation is overwhelming.

these are all big companies.  what about small businesses?

Almost every client I work with has a strong connection with the local community, philanthropic efforts, environmental impact/footprint, recycling efforts, treating staff fairly, etc.  It’s one of the perks of working for a small company!  Do they need a reporting guideline for this?  I don’t think so.  Write a blog entry about your efforts instead.

However, our clients are all North American companies and the GRI is a global organization.  The GRI site does have a section for small business but it needs a lot of work and I was appalled that they would make “the little guy” pay 50Euro’s for a pamphlet.  Sigh.

So, back to my friends.  Yup, they are excitedly creating SharePoint dashboards to support the sustainability/environmental impact metrics for a few sectors (transportation & logistics, mining, oil&gas, construction) and hopefully move them to more open and transparent disclosure.  Given the sectors we discussed I was very pleased.

But I just have to say it: another reporting standard with another acronym.  It really is getting to be too much.