CorpComms Magazine

Many corporate sustainability leaders are failing to exploit all the resources that the Internet offers to engage stakeholders on sustainability issues.

Whilst companies are publishing information about their CSR endeavours online, few are maintaining dialogue with key stakeholders, being instead locked into a mentality of once yearly reporting, according to a new study by international communications consultancy Lundquist.

Average scores for sustainability communications via companies' English-language websites fell by 1.6 percentage points since last year's survey. Particular areas of weakness included stimulating dialogue, encouraging interactivity and delivering information on governance, ethics and socially responsible investment, according to the survey of the corporate websites of 91 members of the Dow Jones Sustainability Index.

The results of the study suggest a lack of urgency in companies' CSR reporting, with two in five publishing no CSR-related press releases or news items and four out of five failing to indicate when their pages were last updated. Social responsibility does not necessarily translate into social media, with seven out of ten of the sustainability leaders not enabling the sharing of content on social networking forums. 

But the UK is ahead of the global average when it comes to Internet CSR and sustainability communications, the report claims. Britain boasted four of the top 11 online communicators of sustainability. The quartet was comprised of home improvement retailer Kingfisher, mining group Xstrata, pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline and energy company Royal Dutch Shell.

James Osborne, head of CSR communications at Lundquist, said: 'Banking failures and oil spills have made people increasingly suspicious when they hear companies talk about sustainability or responsibility. But many companies don't seem to be willing to engage on these issues using the most dynamic and open medium they have - the Internet.'

Ornella Ponzoni, CSR researcher at Lundquist, said: 'Many companies don't attribute sufficient importance to online CSR communications, even though the Internet is a first port of call for many stakeholders. All too often, information is extracted directly from reports without making content engaging and presenting it in the context of the company's overall business activities and commitment to responsibility.'

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