GRI to Survey Report Users

Stakeholders to select best sustainability report in global poll.

By Dennis Schaal

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) announced that it will launch a web-based global survey of sustainability report readers to assess the strengths and weaknesses of reporting.

The GRI survey will be conducted in partnership with KPMG, SustainAbility and the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. Tata Consultancy Services will build a survey website, which is slated to be operational Oct. 1.

The reasoning behind the survey, said Wim Bartels, a partner in KPMG's Global Sustainability Services unit, is that stakeholders, whether they are shareholders, employees or supply chain partners, should have input into the effectiveness of sustainability reporting and how it meets their varied needs.

"Why are we really writing these reports?" Bartels said, referring to a question that he thinks should be asked in corporate boardrooms. "It is a very fair question to ask and review now and then."

Survey participants also will be asked to nominate and score individual sustainability reports, and an overall best sustainability report will be selected for an award. In addition, awards will be presented based on the perspectives of various constituencies, including "investors, labor, civil society, employees/management and media," the GRI stated.

The survey will be part of the GRI Readers Choice Awards, with award winners and survey results revealed at a May 7-9 GRI conference in Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, KPMG is beginning to plan a 2008 update of its “KPMG International Survey of Corporate Responsibility Reporting,” last issued in 2005. KPMG is also discussing ways of incorporating parts of the GRI reader survey into next year’s publication, Bartels said.

The GRI is a large network of stakeholders that use the initiative’s reporting framework, a global standard in sustainability reporting, to report and access information internationally.