Why YOU HAVE to attend.......

..... the fourth annual Smarter Sustainability Reporting conference. It's on February 24th, 2015 in London.  It's THE annual conference all about sustainability reporting that I chair every year. No, it's not just for reporting geeks, though geeks are thoroughly welcome.

And the reason YOU HAVE to attend is that, for three years now, we have held these totally amazing, informative, content-rich, expertise-packed, opinion-forming, insight-generating, brain-cell-activating, networking-supporting conferences and we still do not have the answer to the question: What is Smarter Sustainability Reporting? We've debated, discussed, shared, chaired, talked, balked, asked, answered, thought, contemplated, ruminated, instigated, irritated, cajoled, encouraged, suggested, digested and just about everything else you do and don't do at conferences... and we still don't have a definitive answer. That's sad. We may have had an answer in the second conference, but then the world changed and we went back to the drawing board at conference three. At this, the fourth annual, we simply have to have an answer. Maybe YOU are the one who can help?

We have a great line-up of expert speakers and panelists - and still more to confirm.

• Nelmara Arbex, Chief Advisor on Innovation in Reporting, Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) 
• Sarah Grey, Markets Director, International Integrated Reporting Council, IIRC
• Steve Kenzie, UK Network Secretariat, Global Compact Network
• Simon Howard, Chief Executive Officer, UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association (UKSIF)
• Dr. Paul Toyne, Sustainability Director, Balfour Beatty Construction Services
• Louise Tyson, Head of Reporting, BP
• Katie Buchanan, Head of Sustainability and Reporting, Virgin Media
• Irene Jakobi, Sustainability Manager, Telekom Austria
• Mardi McBrien, Managing Director, Carbon Disclosure Standards Board (CDSB)
• Shaun Davis, Group Director of Safety, Health, Wellbeing &  Sustainability, Royal Mail
• Crystal Crawford, Corporate Responsibility Manager, Liberty Global
• Verity Lawson, Sustainability Reporting Manager, British American Tobacco
• Michaela Rose, Sustainability Advisor, Forum for the Future

You would think that these fantastic experts would have ALL the answers but I can promise YOU, they can't do it on their own. They need YOU.

How do YOU define Smarter Sustainability Reporting? What makes smart smarter? And what makes reporting reporting? From GRI G4 to integrated reports to carbon disclosures to investor interest to innovation to local/global to transparency, creativity and materiality and a whole lot more, we'll be looking to get at the answer that has been evading tens of speakers and hundreds of delegates since the start of our conference series. Do YOU know? Are YOU harboring a totally intelligent response that we are all waiting for? Are YOU willing to share? Will YOU come to the conference and enlighten all of us? 

If YOU decide to come and help us out, I can offer YOU a discount (being the chair has some privileges) and I can promise to be eternally grateful. And so will everybody else. YOUR presence and contribution is absolutely what will make the difference.

That's not to say that in three years of conferences we haven't answered other questions about reporting, the reporting landscape, trends, challenges, risks and opportunities. A mix of practitioner and subject-matter experts, we have always had rich debate and generated a host of action-oriented insights. The feedback from attendees has always been strong. Each conference has been remarkable. The desire to share and learn more about what's going on in reporting is obviously very much alive for both reporting geeks and reporting non-geeks. That's why we keep doing it. 

You may be wondering by now, what's the point of having a conference every year that can't answer its own question? I remember someone quoting some smart famous person who said: if you keep doing the same things, you keep getting the same results. Or something like that, probably more elegantly put. Which is exactly why we continue to shake things up every year. No two conferences are the same. We have a different agenda, different speakers, different round-table talk sessions, different panel discussions and different areas of focus. We don't keep doing the same things but we still don't have the answer to this really truly completely fully exceptionally elusive question: What is Smarter Sustainability Reporting? Obviously, we have been missing something. Yes. We have been missing YOU. So, please come. Please share. Please tell us YOUR answer. Please help make this conference even  more remarkable. 

So: Block out the date in your diary. Contact me for a 15% discount code. Register. Get prepared to share. And watch this space in the run-up to the conference for more posts in conversation with some of our speakers.

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.   

The Price of a Sustainability Report

What value would you place on your Sustainability Report? $1 ? $10 ? $1,000 ?

Here is an organization that has an answer. $200.

This is what non-members have to pay to read The MPI GRI Sustainability Report on WEC 2011 in which MPI presents its Global Reporting Initiative statement for the 2011 World Education Congress in Orlando. 

Meeting Professionals International (MPI), apparently, is "the meeting and event industry’s most vibrant global community [which] helps its members thrive by providing human connections to knowledge and ideas, relationships, and marketplaces."   MPI has certainy elevated the value of sustainability Reporting. To a whole $200.

Who would have thought that Sustainability Reports would become a new revenue stream?


elaine cohen, CSR consultant, winning Sustainabilty 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  (Beyond Business, an inspired CSR consulting and Sustainability Reporting firm)

A new reporting trend: Events

Just as I was thinking about my next blop (blog post for the uninitiated), up popped a fantastic question from my Twitter friend @Juliengoy. He asks: Do you think its relevant to write a CSR report for an event ?
Now isn't that an interesting concept ? Of course, asking me, a committed reporter (there are some that agree that I  should be committed. Make of that what you will), is quite rhetorical. Of course, it is relevant to write CSR reports for events.

Lets take a look at what's out there with regard to CSR and sustainability for events management:

You have all heard of BS8901,  the British Standard for Sustainable Events, updated in September 2009 which covers financial, environmental and social risks involved with events of all kinds. The London Olympics in 2012 will be a sustainable event according to the guidelines established by London 2012. There are many web resources that assist in the planning of sustainable events, such as EventSustainability.com and the Sustainable Events Planner. The Virgin London Marathon published a Sustainability Report for their event in 2009 and the European Offshore Wind 2009 Conference and Exhibition published a Sustainability Assessment Report of their event. You can even find a brilliant presentation on the subject of sustainable events on Slideshare posted by Michael Luehrs, and if you are quick you can just catch the Third Annual Sustainable Events Summit in London on 19th april 2010.

All of the above should be unrefutable proof that sustainability events are an event, and that reporting of sustainability events is a necessary element of such events. I will even suggest that we are seeing a new reporting trend emerging .  

However, in thinking about this a little further, I realise that I haven't noticed anything out there that represents a standard for CSR reporting of such events. Clearly, the entire GRI Framework is a little top-heavy for a single event and wasn't designed for this purpose. What would the performance indicators for an event look like in CSR language? What would be the material issues? Which metrics ? Which core disclosures? This is quite an interesting subject and if I have time, I might be tempted to hold an event just to to discuss how we would report it. And you can bet that with any event that I organize, a core sustainability metric would be the amount of free Chunky Monkey available to all stakeholders.

Julien, mon ami, does that answer your question ?

elaine cohen is the CEO of Beyond Business, a leading social and environmental consulting and reporting fitm. Visit our website at www.b-yond.biz/en