10 Mistakes of Corporate Sustainability Reporting

• Weak goals: know what success looks like for your company and build your CSR around that
• Mismanaged data: collect good data, and assign responsibilities to trained people to check for accuracy
• Disordered priorities: prioritize sustainability in the CSR reports as well as financial performance
• Discounting feedback: take advice from third parties such as auditors
• Breaking the rules: good reporting should follow a trusted framework or guideline
• Tenuous comparisons: know how sustainable you are compared to your industry peers, not your own benchmarks
• Unreachable targets: make your targets relevant and aggressive, but still achievable
• Underreporting: communicate your progress in a variety of ways and in different media
• Thinking short-term: don't turn down a sustainable opportunity because of a higher price tag or longer ROI
• Inadvertently greenwashing: don't focus solely on the positives; make reporting meaningful by acknowledging areas for improvement

Source: Greenbiz.com

By Gaylen Davenport