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, and Jamie Jones Ezefili from Northern Trust, an accomplished first time reporter, shared some best practices for first time reporting.

“A GRI report is tool for organizational change,” Rassier noted. By following the GRI reporting methodology, a company is encouraged to talk to a few more stakeholders, benchmark a bit more, collect and analyze more data and share a bit more. Each of these steps requires a little bit more buy-in from a few more co-workers. Indeed, the GRI methodology provides a detailed roadmap for producing a comprehensive sustainability report.

  • Host a kick-off meeting: 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.
  • Collect data: After the kickoff comes collecting data. Rassier suggests collecting what is available. Try to get it all — even if data owners are not ready to disclose.
  • Rely on data that already exists 
  • Focus on nerds, punters, and employees: When it comes to the actual writing, Rassier recommends remembering three main readers: sustainability nerds like the readers of this article, punters who are interested in a specific element of your company and employees.

Read the full article about sustainability reporting by Jen Boynton at TriplePundit.