Get Ready for First-Time Sustainability Reporting
by Jen Boynton
Originally published on TriplePundit
At this week’s 2018 GRI Reporters’ North America Summit, participants geeked out on all the best ways to improve their sustainability reporting with increased materiality, stakeholder engagement and communications. But the conference also served newer reporters, sharing tips and tools for those just getting started with reporting. Stewart Rassier from the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, an experienced consultant with multiple “first reports” under his belt, together with Jamie Jones Ezefili from Northern Trust, an accomplished first time reporter, shared some best practices for first time reporting.
The very very first step for an intrepid reporter is to host a kick off meeting with key stakeholders: people who want to be involved (leadership and key advocates) and people who need to be involved, who own data you will need to access. Jones explained that bringing everyone together allowed the team to feel like a group. After one passthrough the reporting cycle, Jones made sure to publicly congratulate everyone who helped her. Northern Trust uses an internal rewards system. She also made sure to communicate with all the relevant managers and management group.
This year, “Everyone accepted my kickoff meeting request right away. No one tried to delegate so it seemed to work really well.
