G4 inside out: balanced reporting

Balanced reporting is credible reporting. No organization has a solely good or bad story to tell as far as sustainability reporting is concerned, and your organization should aim for balanced reporting as the optimal approach. Balanced reporting requires an organization to stand back and take an overall view of its total impacts, rather than just trumpeting good news about positive impacts in a given moment.

Using G4 should help everyone to identify the impacts that your organization has on a range of economic, environmental, and social matters. Good and bad, short term and long term, actual and potential; G4 is there to facilitate communicating about your impacts, and what you’re doing about them.

Balance arises from taking a broad view, from a certain openness. Your organization’s most significant impacts could be indirect – something that’s done by one of your suppliers, for example. And they can range far and wide. The community in which you operate may be delighted you operate there – but in the near future, your use of manufacturing materials could impact people on the other side of the world. It’s this wider view that effective sustainability reporting intends to capture.

Hier geht's zum Artikel, erschienen globalreporting.org.