Naturally, the CSR reports will be available from the CSR section, just as the financial reports will be available from the IR section, but I think that the smaller services provided to the visitor in the IR section should be replicated in CSR.
Just as the investor section should have FAQs, a glossary, contacts and a calendar, I believe that the CSR section should have the same content and functionality – including the events calendar.
Investor terminology could be unfamiliar to some visitors, but so can the CSR terminology (BITC, GRI, NRPB, EMS and DEFRA, anyone?). The industry itself may also be opaque to some readers, so it may be worth including some industry specific terms in both glossaries.
Provision of CSR contacts is important too, but even more so is the name of an individual – ideally at director level – who is responsible for CSR, as this shows that the company takes these issues seriously. I like to see a personal email address for this person, (joe.bloggs@company.com) rather than a generic box address (csr@company.com). Yes, I recognise that this could be a non-existent person, whose email box is checked by several different people, but I do think this would eventually be spotted by CSR analysts, and that this would result in serious loss of credibility.
A set of FAQ may help reduce the number of duplicate queries to this CSR email address – and again, reinforce the company’s commitment to these issues.
An event calendar for CSR is very unusual; Tesco is the only one I can find at the moment, though I am sure I have seen one on the Brambles site in the past. Please let me know of any more that are out there …
Lucy is Editor at Corporate Eye