4 reporting tips from Dr. Sustainability

Dr. Sustainability has made a short (3 minute) video all about sustainability reporting.

Dr. Sustainability, as you may know, is a regular guest expert on the CSR Reporting Blog. This time, she agreed to share some reporting tips and help a reporting geek (me) and Beyond Business (my company) spread our message about creating great Sustainability Reports. This is part of our preparation for our brand new Beyond Business website which is in the final stages of preparation. For the time being, I am happy to share our short, fun, reportingy geeky vid.

The video was created by Alexandre (Alex) Magnin and narrated by Juno Rinaldi. Alex is a skilled illustrator with a passion for sustainability. You can see more of his work and a range of fun-educational sustainability videos on the Sustainability Illustrated site.  

Check out our new vid:

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of Understanding G4: the Concise guide to Next Generation Sustainability Reporting  AND  Sustainability Reporting for SMEs: Competitive Advantage Through Transparency AND CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices . Contact me via Twitter (@elainecohen)  or via my business website www.b-yond.biz   (Beyond Business Ltd, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm).  Check out our G4 Report Expert Analysis Service - for published G4 reports or pre-publication - write to Elaine at info@b-yond.biz to help make your G4 reporting  even better. 

10 ways to liberate the sustainability report

Yesterday saw the publication of the SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index, a must-read for anyone who wants to know who are the corporate movers and shakers of the social media cypermap and what they are doing and why.  According to the report, authored by the social-media master Matthew Yeomans, "a new landscape of social media sustainability has emerged. Today, at least 250 major corporates are engaged in some form of social media sustainability comms and more than 100 have a blog, YouTube, Facebook or Twitter channel dedicated to talking about sustainability."

The report ranks the social media practices of 100 top rated sustainable companies (selected from existing listings and green rankings) provided they have a blog, Facebook page, Twitter account or YouTube channel..  If you are serious about socmed, then at least one of these options is a must-have.

Companies today are using social media "to not just communicate their sustainability stance but also to involve the public in building a better world". The main ways in which they do this include hiring experienced filmmakers, writers and reporters to tell a complicated story well, crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, creating alliances with NGOs, charities and conservation watchdogs to support common goals and raise awareness, leveraging the public through campaigns and contests, and more. Twitter is the main platform used by corporates, followed by Facebook, YouTube and a Company blog. See the full report to see who does what best. But here's a hint. The top ten in social media.

The methodology of calculating the ranking for the 100 companies in the sample is based on a score of a maximum 100 points which include the following parameters:

• Useful communication: possible 20 points
• Commitment to community: possible 20 points
• Transparency (allowing comments and replying) - 10 points
• Communicating actions not beliefs - possible 10 points
• Social media shareable CR/Sustainability Report - possible 10 points
• Regular updates of social media communication - possible 10 points
• Creative storytelling - possible 20 points

GE came out as the overall best with a score of 93 points, retaining its first place from last year because of consistent leverage of social media channels to advance the Ecomagination and Healthimagination agendas, and also because of its "App". There are actually several companies who are using Apps to make their reports accessible to a wider audience, as I mentioned in my CSRwire.com article earlier this month. Apps will become commonplace for Sustainability Reports, I have no doubt. Pretty soon we will need an App to track the Sustainability Report Apps. VF corporation made it into 7th place with 84 points (from nowhere last year) , mainly because of its Timberland acquisition. The Top Ten SocMed Swingers' best practices are profiled in the report which makes for fascinating reading and offers inspiration for companies which haven't yet staked their claim.

One thing that was of particular interest to reporting geeks like me was Matthew Yeoman's analysis entitled "10 ways to liberate the sustainability report". This year, 36% of the 100 companies reviewed in the index have used social media to "liberate their reports from the dungeons of disinterest" (wow, a little harsh, maybe? Remind me to take a look in my local dungeon for the 64% which have apparently stayed there). Anyway, 36% is more more than double the number of companies which were reported to be dungeon-free  last year. The ones who are picked out for commendation are:

• GE : for their iTunes App
• Alstom : with a shareable microsite
• Timberland: for use of social channels
• SAP: for an interactive materiality matrix
• North Face: for use of video
• Alcatel Lucent: for publishing their report on Scribd
• Danisco: for publishing on Slideshare
• UPS and McDonald's: for use of infographics
• Ford: for a sharable digital map

Finally, the report also lists the top 100 Sustainability Twitterers (among which I am proud to be counted) and I will now happily call myself a member of the Wizness Green Twitterati. 22 of the 100 are company twitter handles and 20 are NGO's. A good a #CSR #FF list as ever there was.

By now it is clear that Sustainability without Social Media is like Ice Cream without a Spoon. It's all in the delivery. The SMI-Wizness Social Media Sustainability Index will help you think about what companies are doing today to leverage their sustainability platforms through all the social media possibilities that are available. The author even offers a checklist to help companies get thinking about telling their social stories. The only thing that's missing is what flavor ice-cream the corporate bloggers prefer.

elaine cohen, CSR consultant, Sustainability Reporter, HR Professional, Ice Cream Addict. Author of CSR for HR: A necessary partnership for advancing responsible business practices Contact me via www.twitter.com/elainecohen  on Twitter or via my business website www.b-yond.biz/en  (BeyondBusiness, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

Who will be the FIRST to talk about YOUR CSR report?

Disclosure: This is a bit of a sales pitch for a new service related to reporting. I wanted to make you aware of a new offering by CorporateRegister.com and 3BL Media, and myself. It's called the VideoReportAlert and as its sounds, building on the highly popular and effective ReportAlert sevice offered by CorporateRegister.com, it uses the innovative and attractive format of video to announce your sustainability reports to stakeholders in a format they can easily absorb via one of the most extensive distribution networks available.

This is the press release announcing the new service.

You see, one of the things about sustainability reports is that you have to work very hard to get people to take an interest in them. No matter how fascinating, fair, balanced, well written or well designed your report is, it's not the Taj Mahal , the Leaning Tower of Piza or Stonehenge. People will not flock in their droves to get a glimpse of it just because it exists. They will not suddenly decide to descend on your website, click on the tab that says Sustainability Report , if there is one, and spend hours reading it online. They will not analyse your sustainability KPI's before doing their weekly shopping, and they will not take your report to the beach to read as they bask in the sunshine. Your report is a non-issue for them. With the exception of a few professionals who are in the know, for most people, sustainability reporting just hasn’t hit the radar. Despite the fact that over 6,000 companies report on sustainability around the world, the reach of sustainability reports is still not exploited to its full potential. Say the words CSR report to anyone who's not associated with reporting professionally and you draw a blank. Before you can get people to engage around you report, you have to get them to know that it exists.

So, what do you do? You have written your report, you are really proud and quite exhausted. All that is needed is for people to NOTICE it.  Oooooops. Not happening. What next?

The question of "what next" is actually  something you should plan long before your report is published. What to do with a report after it is published is the most important question you can ask, early on in the process, before you even start to write. Missed that ? OK. Fine. Now you have published, you issue a press release. A proportion of your target audience will notice. You send a few hundred (thousand?) copies to stakeholders. Fine. More people take note. You advise all your Facebook and Twitter fans and shoot a message over to Linked in. Brilliant. You're getting there. Nevertheless, at the end of 2009, youTube was getting ONE BILLION HITS per day. Clearly, this is where people are (also) (mainly?) going in order to hear about new stuff, get informed and entertained. And there are many other video hosting sites around too. Why not take advantage of this and bring your report to where one billion stakeholders are hanging out every day? Present your report using this massive network of video channels. This will enhance exposure to your report tremendously and will not only inform but be more effective in encouraging more people than ever before to take a look. BUT. It takes time and effort to produce a video. You are dead beat just producing the report. You didnt plan for additional  expense of  producing more communications  materials. Here is where we come in. Let us do it for you. With this new service called VideoReportAlert,  we prepare for you a short video highlighting the key points and personal insights from your sustainability report in a lively way, and actively promote the video throughout our extensive networks. We can put this together within 7 days at a very reasonable price that won't be too much of an obstacle even for smaller companies. If you want to know more, ask me, or write to info@corporateregister.com . Perhaps your VideoReportAlert could even go viral! But even if it doesn’t, you can be sure that it will enhance exposure for your report and the interest of a much wider range of stakeholders. Let us be the ones to start off the conversation about YOUR report.

In the meantime, see Paul Scott, CEO of CorporateRegister.com talking about VideoReportAlert (VRA)




Also, you can take a look at the VRA we prepared using the HP Citizenship Report for 2009.




Finally, you can read more details of this service on the VideoReportAlert section of the CorporateRegister.com Services page here.

See you on camera!

elaine cohen is co-founder and co-CEO of Beyond Business, a leading social and environmental consulting and reporting firm. contact elaine at www.twitter.com/elainecohen   or Visit our website at www.b-yond.biz/en

Where's the popcorn ?

Here is an innovative CSR Report. Is it a global first ? Maybe. Except for the fact that it is Solar Century's second video CSR report. It's the only report I have seen in video format. Here it is:

Solar Century CSR Report 2007-2008

It's a 22.04  minute video which talks about the Company's CSR performance.  It covers most topics that are usually included in a CSR report, following a structure which is based on the 10 principles against which the Company does business. Company people, starting with the Executive Chairman, talk through the key issues, and the report includes star-appearances from external partners such as a recycling operator and a customer and others. It's light on data, with environmental data presented in graphs on screen which are a little hard to follow and disappear rather quickly.The report specifies 5 quantifiable  targets in the area of environmental impacts reduction. As far as movies goes, it's not bad. Nice shots of photovoltaics in different settings and on different roofs and many other shots of different aspects of the Company's work and activities. The visuals certainly assist in giving us an appreciation for what this Company does and how. 

The video  is accompanied by a 30 page PDF download which resembles the kind of document we are familiar with, for better or for worse. The written document contains the data in the video and  additional information.  It's clear and easy to read.

This is clearly a sustainability-minded Company and I admit that the video, if you can spare 20 minutes to watch it from start to finish, is not a bad job at all. It offers little in the way of excitment, with a narrator that sounds a little like my GPS navigator, and no Hollywood stars or special effects (James Cameron wouldn't have been challenged), but it gets the message through and leaves you with a feeling that Solar Century is actually quite a good busines doing quite good work.

I would recommend splitting the video report into sections and offering the viewers the chance to select the bits they want to view, as not everyone has the time and the patience to watch a 20 minute marathon. In this 140 character world of micro-everything, I think Solar Century's movie-time might be better as a series of micro-movies rather than this one Gone-with-the-Wind version. 

In any event, thumbs up to Solar Century for an innovative, creative report, one in which they have clearly invested time and effort and personal involvement of a range of budding Hollywood stars.

I hope everyone doesn't produce video reports. I go through too much popcorn.

elaine cohen is the joint CEO of BeyondBusiness, a leading reporting and social-environmental consulting firm. Visit our website at: www.b-yond.biz/en