The preparation of public non-financial reports is a relatively new trend in socially oriented Russian business. The public report of the company has little to do with the internal reporting system and is fundamentally different from the accounting analysis, therefore the process of preparing the document has its own essential features.
Business information transparency
Public reports came to domestic business from the West, where for decades they were used as a mechanism to create information transparency in the activities of organizations. In the United States and Europe, as a rule, all large companies publish sustainable development reports annually, in which they provide information on the social component of their work and measures to protect the environment.
Most often, such reports are prepared by non-mining, industrial and manufacturing enterprises from a large market segment. In the documents, along with the annual production volumes, they note what benefits they have brought to society. Thus, public reports mainly consist of the results of the organization's charitable activities, compliance with environmental legislation, participation in the development of civil society, and support for social initiatives.
The trend of recent years indicates an increase in interest from medium and even small businesses in the preparation of public reports, which indicates the usefulness of this mechanism for achieving corporate goals. Small market participants have developed an understanding that information on sponsorship for sports clubs and patronage over an art school, even with low financial costs, must certainly become public.
The main addressees of public reports are:
- a wide range of public - consumers of services and goods, the population of the region where the company operates;
- business partners - company founders, board members, customer service representatives, contractors, and even competing organizations;
- mass media;
- company employees.
A public report is a document adapted for a wide range of stakeholders, which affects the writing style, graphic design and the choice of information for submission.
Choice of information
The collection of information for public reporting is ongoing. The best option is to allocate a separate staff unit for this work. The duties of an employee, in this case, should include the systematic collection of information from all structural divisions of the enterprise according to verified criteria.
Such information blocks should include all information on the implementation of social projects, namely: meetings with government officials, consumers, work on citizens' appeals, charitable events, etc.
As is often noted in the methodological materials for preparing reports, the very process of collecting information pushes companies to the need to increase charitable support, create new social projects, announce grants, etc.
Large enterprises, as a rule, do not invent their own “recipes” for preparing public reports, but use GOST ISO 26000 “Guide to social responsibility”, which groups all the fundamental goals of creating public documents.
Submission of information
An important criterion for a high-quality public report is the accessibility of perception to a wide range of people. Such documents should be understandable to almost any interested person, serve as a reliable source of information and do not require additional requests to the company for clarifications.
Often, public reports have a large number of graphs, charts and tables, which simplifies the presentation of information. Photos are also an important part of a quality public report.
Practice shows that the layout of a public report should gravitate towards a brochure rather than a documentary presentation. Most often, a public report has a horizontal format.
The structure of the document includes a title page, content, an introduction, which can be replaced by a welcome speech by the head of the organization, the main part, a conclusion and a terminological dictionary. The alphabetical index will also make it easier to navigate the document, but for the sake of length it can be omitted.
Distribution of the public report
The printed public report is intended to be sent to key addressees - founders, as well as business partners. In electronic form, the public report is posted on the official website and sent to representatives of the media.
To inform the employees of the organization, the electronic version of the public report is sent to the divisions of the organization.
