1. Report Quality and
Assurance
Chair: John Purcell, Policy Advisor Corporate Regulation, CPA Australia; Member, GRI’s
Australian Advisory Group
.
Richard Boele, Managing Director, Banarra
Renzo Mori Junior, Researcher, University of Southern Queensland
Adrian King, National Leader, Climate Change & Sustainability Services, KPMG
Nancie-Lee Robinson, General Manager – Governance, Integration & Reporting, Telstra

2. GRI Guidelines for assurance of
sustainability reports: Fortune Global
500 list 2010 analyses
Renzo Mori Junior
PhD St d t University of S th
Student, U i it f Southern Q
Queensland
l d
March 2012

3. Outline
 Aims of the Presentation
 Literature review
 Methodology
 Situation of the Global Fortune 500 (2010)
 Recommendation

4. Aims of the Presentation
 Discuss current situation of the assurance process;
p
 Present percentage of organisations issuing a
sustainability report, following the GRI framework and
report
including an external assurance;
 Assess whether organisations which follow GRI’s
guidelines tend to adopt an assurance process;
 Provide suggestions to enhance transparency and to
contribute toward improvement of the current
p
assurance practices for GRI sustainability reports.

5. Literature Review
 Voluntary and not regulated in a majority of
countries;
 Different assurance providers providing different
types of assurance services with different types of
assurance statements;
t t t
 Some stakeholders are not able to identify those
y
differences and question the benefits of the
assurance process in the way it has been provided.

6. Methodology
gy
 Analyses of the organisations listed on the Global
y g
Fortune 2010 official website;
 Sustainability reports which:
 Contain social and environmental performance;
 Information in English;
 Issued by corporative, holding or global
organisations’ representatives.
i ti ’ t ti
 16 organisations were excluded from the analyses,
resulting in a sample of 484.

7. Sustainability Reports
y p
 All the sample p
p provided some type of information
yp
regarding environmental and/or social performance;
85%
(413)
15%
(71)
Without formal report With formal report

8. Sustainability Reports
y p
85% with formal Sustainability Report
y p
42%
85%
(173)
(413) 58%
(240)
GRI Framework Without GRI Framework

9. GRI Framework
hout GRI Framework
42% 9%
(173) (15)
91%
(158)
With Assurance Without Assurance
Framework
58% 43%
(240) 57%
(103) (137)

10. ype
yp of Assurance Providers
80
60%
7
50% 6
40%
37
30%
2
20% 13
7
10%
0%
Accountants Consultants M i xe d Specialist
With GRI 58% 27% 5% 9%
Without GRI 40% 13% 0% 47%

11. General Conclusions
 GRI recommends the use of external assurance;
 Organisations which follow the GRI framework tend
to have their sustainability report assured;
 GRI plays an important role in the assurance
process;
 GRI could suggest th use of a content index to
ld t the f t ti d t
provide users with a quick overview of what has been
analysed during the assurance process
process.

12. Recommendation
 Example of how the content index could be used

13. Authors Contacts
Renzo Mori Junior (PhD Student)
renzo.morijunior@usq.edu.au
Prof. Peter Best (Supervisor)
Peter.Best@usq.edu.au
P t B t@ d
Prof.
Prof Julie Cotter (Supervisor)
Julie.Cotter@usq.edu.au