Tips for hiding sustainability reporting from interested stakeholders

Here’s something from the desk of bad advice:

Sustainability reporting has grown, evolved, devolved and reimagined itself several times over the past decade. A review of the sustainability reporting from top 100 companies by Fortune reveals that sustainability data has benefited from standards, and reports now include very material information about impacts that have implications for business strategy.

It is also apparent that sustainability reporting must be a resource-intensive activity. Imagine transparency as an expensive window into your company. Now imagine that window covered by fresh bricks on both sides.

If you do choose to create an entire site devoted to your report and other sustainability content, then make sure that it’s a stand-alone section, standing very alone.

It’s not easy to keep this valuable and tediously collected information about key corporate activities out of the hands of investors, decision-makers or any interested member of society, but here are a few helpful and common strategies.

The website

While there are many ways to effectively hide your sustainability report data within the corporate website (too many to list), the most acceptable tactic is to navigate to your website, blindfold yourself, spin around twice, then click the mouse — that’s your new location for this year’s report.

If you do choose to create an entire site devoted to your report and other sustainability content, make sure that it’s a stand-alone section, standing very alone, disconnected from anything else and left to think about its value, but not close enough to the real annual report because of jealousy and such.

Read more: http://www.greenbiz.com/article/tips-hiding-sustainability-reporting-interested-stakeholders

Source: greenbiz.com