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The rules of the glance: global standards can help organizations communicate their sustainability efforts clearly and credibly.

Article Excerpt
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It's a challenging time to be a corporate communicator. Trust in corporations has reached a record low and brands are in peril. Public awareness of critical environmental and social issues has grown rapidly. Demand for disclosure is high. And budgets have shrunk. At the same time, communicators are under pressure to meet stakeholder needs for full transparency of their organizations' social, environmental and economic priorities, while also rebuilding trust, bolstering beleaguered brands and minimizing risk.

Fortunately, several standards and tools are available to help them communicate credibly about their sustainability efforts. Indeed, some companies are not only applying these tools with excellent results, they're also developing their own best practices in sustainability communication.

The current landscape

One corollary to declining trust in corporations is higher stakeholder expectations, especially related m ethical behavior, governance and environmental stewardship. Publicly held companies are seeing shareholder resolutions about transparency, reporting and climate-change-related disclosures, while companies of all sizes and structures face increasing pressure from employees to improve sustainability performance.

This has led to a marked upturn in communications about sustainability, internally and externally, including an onslaught of sustainability-oriented marketing campaigns. Credibility is hard to achieve, however, both among consumers and experts. For example, a 2008 GlobeScan study of sustainability experts revealed that most believe sustainability-focused communications to be strategic and temporary, as opposed to a sign of authentic change.

So, if current communications are deemed ineffective or inauthentic, what, exactly, do stakeholders want? Whether they are employees, consumers, investors, the media or activist groups, they generally seek a demonstration of these key sustainability communication principles:

1. Accountability: Acknowledging and assuming responsibility for the impact of policies, decisions, actions, products and performance. For example, a company might say: "Although our current environmental practices are state-of-the-art, we continue addressing the legacy...

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