How to Prepare a Best Practice Sustainability Report

March 24-25th 2010 | Melbourne
June 9-10th 2010 | Sydney
September 22-23rd 2010 | Melbourne

This two-day workshop is certified by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), the world’s leading framework for sustainability reporting. You will learn the essentials of sustainability reporting so that you can prepare your own sustainability report at a global best practice standard.

This two-day workshop will introduce you to the elements of a good sustainability report using the GRI’s five-step process: prepare, connect, define, monitor and report.

You will learn how to:

• Develop a best-practice GRI sustainability report
• Identify and engaging with your stakeholders as part of the reporting process
• Identify material issues for the report
• Innovative ways to prepare and communicate your sustainability report

This workshop is suitable for new and experienced reporters, and ideal for teams who are involved in collecting or preparing data. ACCSR has helped produce some of Australia’s leading sustainability reports since 2005. Benefit from our experience and become a leader in sustainability reporting. A Certificate of Completion will be issued by the GRI.

Learning objectives:

Part 1: Conceptual introduction and preparation of a GRI reporting process
You will be able to:

• Explain in what a sustainability report is.
• Identify the main potential benefits and challenges of the process involved in producing a report.
• Give examples of links between everyday organisational activities and their economic, social and environmental impacts based on their own current experience and context.
• Recognise some “self-assessment tools” for initial evaluation of such impacts.
• Identify the Global Compact Principles and relate them to the GRI reporting process.
• List the steps to plan and present a reporting process.

Part 2: Dialogue with stakeholders and credibility of the reporting process
You will be able to:

• Explain how they would decide which are the priority stakeholders in their context.
• Justify why stakeholders’ input is critical for the success of the reporting process.
• Explain the difference between a GRI category, GRI aspect and a GRI indicator.
• Explain the GRI materiality principle and the result of its application.
• Explain and give examples of the GRI G3 reporting principles.

Part 3: Defining the content of the report and monitoring
You will be able to:

• Show how an organisation should report on material indicators which are not ready to be reported on.
• Explain the difference between self-declared GRI report levels and assurance on report information.

Part 4: Preparing final reporting and communicating
You will be able to:

• Identify the obligatory components of a GRI G3 report.
• Identify the five key steps in the development of a GRI reporting process.
• Justify the internal and external value of reporting.
• Give examples of GRI reports where the Global Compact Principles were considered in the reporting process.
• Explain what a high quality sustainability report entails.