leftnav_2.gif
Corporate Reporting
Environmental Data Communication
Hitt Institute of Technology Training
Environmental Disclosure
High Level Waste Remediation
Geophysics
Managing the Accountable Business
Columbia River Crabs
Environmental Management
NET Incubator
Contract Wins
Environmental Liabilities
Hanford Monitor
Announcements
Back to Environmental Updates index
Back to Environmental Updates Home
Divider Line
Battelle

Ensuring Performance Improvement and Transparency through Corporate Reporting

office scene Institutional investors are recognizing that a company’s superior performance in environmental, health, and safety (EHS) and sustainable development (SD) helps drive superior shareholder return. The proliferation and strong performance of emerging instruments such as the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and FTSE4Good attest to this trend. To satisfy growing demand, industries must develop reliable and meaningful EHS and SD performance indicators and ensure that the results are verifiable.

For years, public corporations have disclosed financial performance in annual reports, which allows stockholders, employees, customers, partners, and potential investors to review verifiable data that are critical to making decisions about a company. Standards for measuring, reporting, and verifying corporate financial data have become well established, although recent trends have stimulated important changes:

  • Some companies have pushed the envelope of accepted accounting and transparency practices to disclose numbers that have misled and ultimately damaged investors.
  • Increasingly, companies are expected to measure environmental, health, safety, and sustainability performance and share the results. These measures indicate corporate risk and reputation, and serve as indicators of a company’s desirability as an investment, partner, supplier, or employer.

Standards and practices for measuring and reporting performance in EHS and SD are not as well established as those for financial performance. However, significant progress has been made in the past few years. The number and scope of corporate EHS/SD reports is growing fast. Some of Battelle’s work in this area includes:

  • Helping a group of global industry organizations to survey members’ EHS and SD performance reporting practices, challenges, and future trends, and developing a guidebook to document this information as a basis for improving practices worldwide;
  • Developing and implementing a system to define, measure, and report EHS performance for a national energy company in Latin America — part of an effort to create breakthrough EHS performance improvement by linking it with corporate business strategy, goals, and performance management;
  • Conducting a landmark study of the cement industry’s sustainability, which developed key performance indicators to evaluate cement manufacturing and supporting processes, and made recommendations to help enhance the industry’s sustainability in the future; and
  • Developing an energy use and greenhouse gas emissions inventory system for a global energy super major to help them track, report, and manage performance in these areas.

Industries worldwide continue to improve their response to stakeholder demands for greater transparency in EHS and SD performance. In doing so, they can expect to achieve improved business performance by:

  • Substantially reducing risks and costs as a result of improved environmental, safety, and process/product reliability performance; and
  • Enhancing the company’s reputation as a preferred investment, partner, supplier, employer, and neighbor.

For additional information, contact Dean Slocum at (781) 895-4887, slocumd@battelle.org.