HKQAA CSR Strategic Planning and Reporting Workshop

The Workshop entitled “Latest Trends of CSR Strategic Planning and Getting Start of Your CSR Reporting Workshop – ESG, GRI G4 & ISO 26000 Guidelines” was organized by Hong Kong Quality Assurance Agency (HKQAA) on 22nd June 2015. Hong Kong Society for Quality (HKSQ) was one of supporting organizations. The seminar aimed to introduce the latest guidelines and initiatives for businesses to implement CSR and showcase its commitment to sustainable development through CSR reporting, as well as, giving an overview of the HKEx ESG Reporting Guideline and the upcoming GRI G4 Guideline. Before the workshop, I took a photo with Ms. Connie Sham for memory.

Ms. Connie Sham (Head of Audit, Strategic Business, HKQAA) was our guest speaker and her topic named “CSR Practices and Reporting”. In the beginning, Connie briefed some terms which we used frequently that were Sustainable Development, Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). Sustainable Development and Sustainability were used interchangeable and focused on Environment, Social and Economic. CSR had triple bottom line as People, Profit and Planet. She mentioned the upstream was CSR Practices & Performance and the downstream was CSR Reporting.

The Part 1 was CSR Practices which included ISO 26000:2012 – Guidance for Social Responsibility and HKQAA CSR Index. We faced a challenge “How can business be profitable and contribute to social responsibility at the same time?” The answer may be “Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI)”. ISO 26000 could connect high level standards to daily operations. 7 core subjects in ISO 26000 were “Organization governance”, “Human rights”, “Labour practices”, “Fair operating practices”, “Consumer issues”, “The environment”, and “Community Involvement and development”.

The schematic overview of ISO 26000 was discussed and we observed that the result of implement would be maximizing an organization’s contribution to Sustainable Development. Then Connie explained the 7 principles of Social Responsibility including “Accountability”, “Transparency”, “Ethical behavior”, “Respect, consideration & responsiveness towards stakeholder interests”, “Respect for the rule of law”, “Respect for international norms of behavior” and “Respect for human rights”.

After that Connie introduced HKQAA CSR Index which was launched in Dec 2008 and it aimed to promote the principles and guidelines of the ISO 26000 guidance on social responsibility. HKQAA CSR Advocate Index was “Improvement driven” index to enable the participating organizations to determine CSR maturity and strive for continuous improvement. There were 5 scoring categories and 40 recommended CSR practices.

HKQAA CSR index’s 7 principles and 40 recommended CSR practices are showed as follows.

The Part 2 was CSR Reporting. Connie introduced Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines history since 2000. Then she mentioned 5 step process included “Define (Scope & Boundary)”, “Connect (Stakeholder)”, “Prepare (Data + Information)”, “Report (How? Format?)” and “Monitor (Review / Feedback)”.

The GRI G4 Frame was discussed. GRI G4 was aligned with International Integrated Report Council (IIRC) and also supported XBRL which was extensible business report language.

For identifying material aspects and boundaries, we needed to get stakeholders’ involvement to find out their concerns (e.g. survey, interview or focus group) and then using visual representative of prioritization of aspects. X-axis was social impact and Y-axis was stakeholder interests.

The last topic related Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) ESG Report. ESG stands for Environment, Social and Governance. The guide has issued since 2013. There were four subject areas included “Workplace Quality (4 Aspects & 9 KPIs)”, “Environmental Protection (3 Aspects & 14 KPIs)”, “Operating Practices (3 Aspects & 9 KPIs)” and “Community Involvement (1 Aspect & 2 KPIs)”.

Reference:
HKQAA - http://www.hkqaa.org
HKQAA CSR Index - http://www.hkqaa.org/en_gsservice.php?catid=7
HKSQ - http://www.hksq.org/