Know anyone who just loves to read a long integrated report? A report where it’s hard to see what matters and what’s really important because there is so much detailed information.
Achieving a concise integrated report has always been an art. A mindful art of thinking about what goes into the integrated report and what is housed in other reports and information disclosures.
Nowadays, though, this could be even tougher for companies with the advent of new and additional sustainability reporting standards.
Here are the two golden keys:
- Define your corporate reporting suite. This comprises the external reports and information disclosures that are released by the company. Determine the purpose of each report, whether regulatory, industry or voluntary to meet stakeholders’ needs. Determine the information that will go into each report, the standards and frameworks that apply and their disclosure requirements, the materiality basis to be used, how the report will be accessed, and the date of issue.
- Follow the requirements of Integrated Reporting Framework. A company has a mass of information that could go into the integrated report; how you determine the relevant information is to follow the principles and content elements (information areas) of the Integrated Reporting Framework (these are the 19 requirements).
Achieving a concise integrated report pre-supposes that the company has a separate sustainability report to house all of its sustainability reporting disclosures arising from applying multiple sustainability standards (whether it’s the main standards or any of the other 600 sustainability frameworks on specific areas such as waste and packaging).
Housing all of this detailed information in a separate sustainability report makes sense. It’s not practical to house all this detailed information in the integrated report. Similarly so with the detailed financial information which is always housed in the annual financial statements.
And it all gets back to understandability. A company wants its reports to be read and its story to be understood by users and stakeholders. This builds trust and credibility and stakeholder relationships. This means a concise, easy to read and complete integrated report. The IRC of SA is currently developing an Information Paper with practical tips on achieving a concise integrated report that will be released towards the end of 2025.