#HDISU2011

Related to the recent blog entry on making GHG emissions reporting mandatory, I hereby inform you of a little something else related to reporting that is equally exciting. This is the 6th year that Radley Yeldar (RY) have assessed and rated Annual and Sustainability Reports for companies in the FTSE 100 and the 6th year they have produced a report on it. How funny! An engaging report about engaging reports!


#HDISU2011 is the Twitter hash tag for the RY How Does It Stack Up event to mark the launch of their 2011 report of the same name. This publication is more important than simply yet another report; one of RY’s clients bases her bonus on her company’s HDISU score.

So who did well this year?


In the Top 10 Sustainability Reports were Centrica (1st), which was particularly praised for its interactive maps.

Vodafone came 2nd this year, but in general is recognised as a leader in sustainability reporting with a clear link to business strategy. This year’s report from Vodafone had a compelling narrative on the social function of their company and clear measurements and objectives. The mobile technology company came 4th for online reporting.


Kingfisher came 3rd in the Sustainability Report table, for giving stakeholders a clear voice in the report and for comprehensive, well-presented data.


So what are the trends?


Well, at the HDISU2011 launch event, Rosie Acfield set the scene for 2011 reporting in describing the changing legislative context and audience expectations. The following are observed trends:


- There has been a lot of consultation with examples from BIZ on The Future Narrative Of Reporting and The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) on Cutting Clutter.
- Use of online reporting is more frequently seen, for example for The Plan For Growth, HM Treasury. However, the FRC suggestion that companies will no longer have to produce printed reports has been dropped as a proposal, as was announced by FRC’s Steven Harrell recently.
- There is a trend for digital reporting more broadly. 15 million ipad2s have been sold since March 2011, thus it is important to engage users in reports via digital means. There is a trend towards hybrid HTML in this sector, meaning that the report will be partly moving and interactive and partly static text and images.
- Auditing the narrative of reports is becoming increasingly popular, yet there are practical implications of using external auditors given the already tight timescales and costs of Corporate Reporting.
- Governance has been given more of a voice in reports on the usual governance topics, with recent publications of: Women On Boards, Gender Diversity On Boards and The EU Corporate Governance Framework currently being a green paper.
- Mandatory Sustainability Reporting is in place in France, Sweden and Denmark and a whole host of other countries, but not the UK! Although, as the last Amida blog entry shows, GHG emission reporting may become obligatory. In addition there is also the International Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 2015 goal to ‘Report Or Explain’ on Environmental Social and Governance (ESG) performance.
- Integrated reporting is used in Europe in some cases but is not on the horizon for UK companies. Theiirc.org is on RY’s one to watch list.
- The summary report, giving key messages, is a popular one nowadays too.


More on sustainability reporting coming soon…