2006, AccountAbility
Businesses and other powerful organisations face ever growing calls to be accountable to their stakeholders; including customers, employees, local communities as well as investors. Companies seeking to navigate and negotiate these evolving demands and demonstrate their performance have responded with an explosion of metrics, reports and assurance mechanisms. Over three quarters of the S&P 100 Index companies, for example, now produce a social and environmental report.
Reporting organisations and stakeholders alike have sought standards to assure the quality, comparability and usefulness of these disclosures. There are now over 300 standards aimed at assisting businesses in meeting the goal of sustainability. Convergence towards a global architecture of standards that are not just compliance or risk management mechanisms is crucial. Standards which enable organisations to use stakeholder engagement to drive learning and influence decision making are crucial to moving corporate responsiblity beyond compliance towards business strategy, innovation and performance.
The package consists of the following tools and documents:
Core documents:
- AA1000 Framework. Standard, guidelines and professional qualification. The Framework provides guidance to users on how to establish a systematic stakeholder engagement process that generates the indicators, targets, and reporting systems needed to ensure to ensure greater transparency, effective responsiveness to stakeholders and improved overall organisational performance.
- AA1000 Assurance Standard. The AA1000 Assurance Standard covers the principles that define a robust and credible assurance process, the essential elements of a public assurance statement, and the independence, impartiality and competency requirements for assurance providers.
- AA1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard. The AA1000SES advances the right of stakeholders to be heard, and the organisations’ obligation to adequately respond to their concerns. It offers a robust basis for designing, implementing, evaluating and assuring the quality of stakeholder engagement.
Supplemenary documents:
- AA1000 Guidance Note on the Principles of Materiality, Completeness and Responsiveness as they Relate to the AA1000 Assurance Standard. AA1000 Assurance Standard Guidance Notes are intended to provide detailed guidance on the implementation and use of the AA1000 Assurance Standard.
- AA1000 Assurance Standard. Practitioners Note. A meeting was co-hosted by Novo Nordisk and AccountAbility in London on September 26th 2003, with business leaders from leading adopting companies of the AA1000 Assurance Standard. The purpose of the meeting was to share experience and to develop the first of a series of Practitioner Notes to assist in the practical development of the standard both for and by companies and assurance providers. The following Practitioner Notes provide a description and analysis of the experience of adopting companies in applying the AA1000 Assurance Standard.
The AA1000 Register - a diretory of sustainability reports assured against the AA1000 Assurance Standard.
