Reporting on Corporate Sustainability paves the way to showcase your company’s efforts, strengths and challenges in implementing corporate sustainability.

The recent financial tsunami unveiled the serious downside that can occur if transparency and corporate governance are not in place within companies. Calls for stronger monitoring is the latest rising demand from regulators, whilst investors, clients, insurers and the general public are demanding for the disclosure of corporations’ environmental and social performance. In light of this, Business Environment Council held the “Sustainability Reporting Workshop for Beginners” on March 31. This is the third such workshop that BEC has held and regular workshops are scheduled on March 31, April 29, June 30 and July 31. More than 100 senior executives will be trained on Sustainability Reporting throughout this workshop series.

As a leader in the field of Corporate Sustainability, Business Environment Council hosted the workshop, led by experienced trainers with a focus in the area. One of the trainers is Ms Gaby Oetterli, Head of BEC’s Corporate Sustainability team. Gaby has around 10 years experience in helping major companies in areas such as corporate sustainability performance measurement, reporting, training and communication. Recent clients include Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing, HSBC, Swire & Sons, Swire Properties, Hong Kong Land, Gammon Construction, Jebsen & Co, Hong Yip and Pacific Andes. Elizabeth To, the other workshop trainer, is a Specialist - Corporate Sustainability at Business Environment Council. With her Master degree in Corporate Environmental and Sustainability Management from Monash University and experiences in training programs and CSR reporting, Elizabeth presented on comprehensive worldwide guidelines for sustainability reporting in a way easily understood by beginners.

This skill-training workshop equipped participants with the essential concepts, practical tools, step-by-step guidelines to prepare their own report from start to finish. Best practices, emerging trends and global standards were also introduced. Participants were given the chance to practice and sharpen their minds, through defining stakeholders’ priorities and developing the framework for a report, with the help of BEC expert trainers’ comments.

About 20 senior executives from power companies, manufacturing, catering businesses, and government officials joined the March 31 event. The participants found the workshop useful, enhancing both their sustainability concepts and report preparation technique.

Mr Andy Hung, Director or Operations, Fook Tin Technologies Limited, was a participant and said that “The workshop enlightened my mind on sustainability reporting. Sustainability reporting can help a company portray their Corporate Social Responsibility efforts and, therefore, help it to gain an upper hand among its competitors in this age that every company is talking about CSR, particularly publicly listed companies and retailers. In fact, many companies have carried out measurements on their sustainability performance. However, there is still room for companies to improve telling communicating its efforts in CSR." Fook Tin Technologies is a company in manufacturing with office in Hong Kong and factory in China that won many awards in corporate sustainability over years, one of the examples is the BEC-organized Hong Kong Award for Industry: Environmental Performance Grand Award in 2006.

Cecilia Keung, Human Resources Manager of Schneider Electric, also found the workshop immensely valuable. "Through the discussion exercise, we had a chance to think of our own reports and needs. Sustainability reporting is important to us because consuming less, producing more effectively, improving energy efficiency and protecting the environment by offering solutions with a limited environmental footprint are all the central concerns for Schneider Electric." Schneider Electric is a global specialist in energy management.

It's a global trend for companies to produce a sustainability report. Elements such as management process improvements, displaying due diligence and good corporate governance within the company, are all driving sustainability reporting. Data from CorporateRegister.com shows that nowadays 81% of the S&P 100 companies publish sustainability reports, and that in 2007, 2,860 companies produced sustainability reports, surging 110 times from only 26 companies in 1992. In fact, some major blue chips companies in Hong Kong like CLP, Swire Pacific and Hong Kong Exchange and Clearing have started their journey in sustainability reporting, and their reports even gained big applause from their stakeholders.

As the trainer Gaby emphasized during the workshop, sustainability reporting not only helps a company to communicate its corporate sustainability performance but also helps the company to improve it sustainability management practices. "Sustainability Reporting is a reporting on your company’s social, environmental and economic performance, a proactive way of communicating with stakeholders to meet growing transparency expectations, and a management, communication and benchmarking tool." Business Environment Council will run the same workshop again on June 20, 2009. For details and registration, please click here.