GRI and SDGs are more widely used, SDGs remain more popular

Last year, companies already favoured the SDGs over GRI. This trend has been confirmed again this year. The number of companies applying SDGs significantly increased compared to those using the Global Reporting Initiative framework. The SDGs were adopted by 70% of the companies for their reporting purposes, an increase of 12%. At the same time, the use of the GRI guidelines increased from 52% to 59%, that is, by 7%. The SDGs will continue to play an increasing role in CSR reporting over the following years.

FTSE and CAC companies tend to downplay the use of GRI, whereas companies in the IBEX and MIB seem to have a higher preference for this framework. It seems that SDGs tend to be favoured by companies in IBEX and SMI, but not so much in FTSE and DAX.

CSR performance infrequently included in report summaries

For the first time ever, we have analysed whether CSR information is presented in the summaries of corporate reports, alongside aggregated financial information.

A snapshot may – and should – include basic data and accomplishments relating to the CSR effort within the organisation. The goal should be to present the shareholders with a current summary of relevant CSR activities as they stand as at the date of the report. For this study, we have checked whether CSR snapshot data appeared in such reports, and where it did, we analysed the specific topics it covered.

On average, only 40% of the organisations provide a CSR snapshot.