Report content, boundary and quality · draft section 3 of 16

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Part 1: Report Content, Boundary, and Quality

This section provides reporting principles and guidance regarding:

-  Defining report content
-  Setting the report boundary
-  Ensuring quality of reported information.

Defining Report Content

A determination must be made as to the content that should be covered in a report in order to ensure a balanced and reasonable presentation of the organization’s performance.

Identification of stakeholders and consideration of their needs is of central importance to the process of defining report content since the stakeholders who are expected to use the report will become the reference point for many decisions regarding the preparation of the report. Stakeholders are defined broadly as those groups or individuals: (a) that can reasonably be expected to be significantly affected by the organization’s activities, products and/or services; or (b) whose actions can reasonably be expected to affect the ability of the organization to successfully implement its strategies and achieve its objectives.

Stakeholder engagement
Stakeholder engagement is an important aspect of sustainability reporting. Guidance on stakeholder engagement is contained in the principle of inclusivity. Standard disclosure items 4.15-4.18 in Part 2 define what to report on stakeholder engagement and 3.10 – 3.11 define what to report about engagement specifically related to the report.

Reporting principles

Reporting principles describe the outcomes a report should achieve and guide decisions throughout the reporting process, such as which issues and indicators to report, and how to report them. In Part 1, each principle is explained, and is presented with a brief set of tests to help the reporting organization assess whether it has successfully applied the principles. The principles themselves are organized into two groups – principles for determining the issues and indicators on which the organization should report, and principles for ensuring the quality and appropriate presentation of reported information.

Guidance for Defining Report Content

The following approach should govern the use of the GRI reporting framework in preparing sustainability reports.

Overall process for defining report content:

• Identify the issues and related indicators that are relevant for the organization and therefore might be appropriate to report by using the principles of “inclusivity”, “relevance and materiality”, “sustainability context,” and the guidance on setting boundaries.
  • Core indicators are assumed to be material unless demonstrated otherwise on the basis of the GRI reporting principles. GRI additional indicators will also be material in some cases.
  • The indicators in final versions of Sector Supplements are considered to be core indicators, and should be applied using the same approach as the core indicators found in the Guidelines.
  • In addition to the GRI standard disclosures, organization-specific indicators and other information may be useful to explain the organization’s sustainability performance. These disclosures should be subject to the same principles and technical rigour as the GRI standard disclosures.
• Apply the principles listed above using specific methods or processes (see below) to assess which issues and indicators are material, and therefore should be reported on.
• Confirm that the information in the report and the report boundary are appropriate by applying the principle of completeness.

The specific methods or processes used for assessing materiality:

• Differ for, and can be defined by, each organization.
• Should always take into account the guidance and tests found in the GRI reporting principles.
• Should be fully disclosed.

Using the principles:
• Should result in decisions to include, omit, or emphasize specific issues and indicators, and/or to include information beyond the standard disclosures.

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