As an engineer, I hate to admit this. But for a long time, I used to think that achieving something, such as reducing your energy or water usage or increasing productivity, was the end all. You are doing good for your organization. Period. But this is not the whole battle. Documenting and presenting your achievements effectively to stakeholders is as important. If you succeed in meeting your goals, great; you will reap financial and clean energy benefits. But if you don’t document your triumphs and communicate it properly to your customers, employees, stockholders, etc., then you’ve missed the opportunity to show the program’s success and impact that will benefit both your organization and your own career. While we engineers like to achieve physical success, writing a sustainability report is essential, as well, although not necessarily one of our strengths.
If you are involved with a team writing a sustainability or CSR report, start by evaluating your audience. Who is likely to read it? What may those that actually read it look for? It is likely that people with different interests will read the report. People in Financial will be interested in the program’s monetary gains (how much money was saved); people in Environment or Sustainability will want to know GHG emission, waste and other metrics; people in Marketing will look to see how this can be used to further sell products or improve the company’s image. Therefore, make sure to include diverse bottom line facts in the report, so readers can glean satisfaction from it from their points of view.
As engineers and scientists, we take pride in data to prove our point, and data should be part of such a report to demonstrate indisputably what we say we achieved. However, it is important not to overwhelm the reader with data. A small number of summary charts or tables showing before and after are most effective. Bar graphs and pie charts are best to visualize a comparison. Make sure data is normalized to a business metric (GHG emissions / ton of product or / square foot of space) and can be benchmarked to compare to other facilities (including those of competitors).
Perhaps the most critical part of the sustainability report is the Executive Summary because, silly as it sounds, even people who this is important to are pressed for time and may not read the whole report. The Executive Summary must provide basic information and make an impression. So make sure not to write this hastily, throwing it together as the end of your reporting effort. Do not copy and paste from other sections. Make sure it is clear with key bottom line information for the different audience groups.
CCES experts can use these principles and others to help you organize your sustainability program and write and communicate its journey and successes to key stakeholders of your organizations. CCES has helped a number of firms successfully communicate sustainability goals and achievements in a cogent, impressive manner.