The Corporate Impact Reporting Initiative

What is the Corporate Impact Reporting Initiative?
It's a joint project to develop a standard, business-led framework for social and environmental reporting, formed by:

• Business in the Community (BITC) - the UK's leading movement of companies committed to continually improving their positive impact on society;

• the Business Impact Review Group (BIRG) - the founding group of participating companies. These companies made the commitment to jointly develop the "impact indicators" you'll find in this website, then measure themselves and publicly report their performance against them.

What is the Business Impact Review Group?
The founding group of around 20 companies who have made the commitment to measure themselves against robust impact on society indicators, and to report them in a standard format on these web pages. For more information on the Business Impact Review Group, please visit 'Project background'.

What's the value of these indicators?
By reporting against common indicators, the companies are working with Business in the Community to identify those performance measures which should be considered as the irreducible core. If the work is successful, there will be more and more companies providing information against the framework, which will make it easier for outside observers to quickly get to the heart of a company's social and environmental performance.

Surely you can't have one single list of indicators for such a diverse range of businesses?
The indicators aim to provide the core set; any business will need to report specific issues affecting their business sector in greater detail. That is why we encourage visitors to this website to follow links to the companies' own websites, where they will add the detail appropriate to their business.

Isn't this just replicating the Global Reporting Initiative?
The Global Reporting Initiative aims to provide the fullest possible reporting framework, and as a result it has many more proposed indicators from which a company may choose.

The Business Impact Taskforce (who developed the set of indicators which you will find on this site) arrived at these due to the growing demand for a simple framework that identifies the core issues. They were also developed in response to the need to provide useful business information as well as data of interest to external stakeholders.

Some of the participants in the Business Impact Review Group see themselves as working towards the GRI, and feel that the Business Impact framework provides them with a useful route map to get there. Others see the framework as covering all the areas they need to cover. In any case, the experience of the group will no doubt provide useful input to the GRI global consultation processes.

Can my company join the group?
There will be opportunities to take part in later stages of the programme in due course. Register your interest with Katherine Sharp and we will arrange a session to talk through with you what would be involved.

What about companies not based in the UK?
We are developing links with other initiatives which have similar aims. There is a possibility for a continental European shadow exercise, to be organised in collaboration with CSR Europe, and are always interested to hear from initiatives elsewhere in the world. Please contact Katherine Sharp.