Australian companies were found to be leaders in making their ESG objectives clear in integrated reports and reporting ESG impacts in separate reports. However, they fell down on reporting names of stakeholder groups they engaged with, describing and defining boundaries in a supply chain and disclosing in-depth details.
Over 75% of Australian separate sustainability reports failed to disclose how stakeholders were identified, 41% failed to report how they engaged with stakeholders and 38% failed to provide a list of stakeholder groups.
Mark Paterson, principal of Currie, a corporate sustainability specialist which co-authored the report, said: “Global standards make stakeholder dialogue a priority for sustainability reporting, yet a weakness in reporting common to all regions is transparency around stakeholder involvement.