Sustainability Report
Introduction
The underlying assignment aims at preparing sustainability report for fictional company named McGruder Industries which has faced one of the most challenging years in its proud history. For addressing these challenges, leaders of McGruder Industries have taken this as an opportunity to improve its overall sustainability image in the industry. The challenges are found in context of on-going use of child labour in manufacturing facilities, breach of supply contract, false and misleading conduct by Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and fuel spill area at warehouse. Along with this, McGruder industries also undertook several projects such as health and welfare centre projects, employee training program on human rights, research and development grants, and increasing proportion of renewable and recyclable materials.
In this context, GRI sustainability reporting standards are introduced for enabling organisation to be transparent and take responsibility of their acts and its implications. For achieving this, GRI has laid down best practice sustainability reporting standards meeting needs of all users and stakeholders.
In this sense, McGruder Industries act and initiatives are governed under consolidated set of GRI Sustainability Reporting Standards as discussed below:
Economic Sustainability
i) Disclosure 201-4: Financial assistance received from the government
McGruder Industries is under the duty of reporting total monetary value of financial assistance received from the government. It also includes tax reliefs, tax credits, investment grants, research and development grants, financial incentives, financial assistance received from Export Credit Agencies and other kind of financial benefits received from government for any business activity. McGruder Industries reported that Australian Federal government has awarded research and development grant of $15 million which is used for doing research into biotechnology. There is need of providing all this information in detailed terms, such as when government has awarded research and development grants, its usage and overall impact. This is a sustainability reporting standard promoted by GRI standards for reporting publicly on the social and economic impacts of research and development grant. The impacts are reported in both positive and negative terms, and, how it contributes towards the goal of sustainable development. Through this process, McGruder Industries identifies the impact of research undertook by it on the economy and society, and, discloses them in the form of globally-accepted standard (GRI 201: Economic Performance, 2016).
Sustainability reporting standard create a common language for business organisations and stakeholders, within which the social and economic impact of research grant is communicated and understood. The standard is designed for improving and enhancing global comparability of the act, fostering greater transparency and accountability of the organisation.
ii) Disclosure 203-1 Infrastructure investments and services supported
McGruder Industries need to report several information regarding its infrastructure investments and services supported and its extent of development. There is need of detailed current and expected impacts on communities of the infrastructure investment and services. It could be positive and negative, McGruder Industries needs to include and provide details of the impact. No matter, whether the nature of infrastructure investments and services is commercial or non-commercial in nature, it is necessary to include this information. While providing infrastructure investments information, McGruder Industries needs to disclose every detail in terms of total cost, size and duration of the project and services supported. Also, the extent of impact for determining how different communities and local economies are getting affected by the McGruder Industries’ infrastructure investments should be disclosed (GRI 203: Indirect Economic Impacts, 2016)
In its life span, McGruder Industries is found as making several investments on community facilities, utilities, health and welfare projects and many more. This is measure of McGruder Industries contribution towards society and community welfare. McGruder Industries, as reported, it has completed $10 million health and welfare project in Western Australia with the purpose of providing support and assistance to families dealing with wide range of social issues at free of cost. People living in poverty line are facing difficulty in accessing health services due to cost concerns, in this context, this health and welfare project will prove to be a worthy initiative for...