Sustainability Reporting: A Comparative Analysis Of Woolworths Limited And Wesfarmers Limited

Woolworths Limited Sustainability Initiatives

Evaluate the sustainability reports of Woolworths Group as well as Wesfarmers Limited for gaining an insight of the policies associated with sustainability practices.

In the current era, it has become necessary for the business organisations to prepare sustainability reports for meeting the information needs of their associated stakeholders. Sustainability reporting could be described as an organisational report, which provides information about environmental, economic, governance and social performance (Martínez?Ferrero, Garcia?Sanchez & Cuadrado?Ballesteros, 2015). The current report aims to assess the General Reporting Initiative (GRI) approach in the context of two Australian organisations. For this report, Woolworths Limited and Wesfarmers Limited have been selected and their sustainability disclosures would be evaluated in the context of the guidelines laid down in GRI. Both these organisations are the leading retailers operating in the province of Australia.

Woolworths Group:

Woolworths has established “Greening Retail’ in accordance with the internal as well as external structures associated with the Australian corporate sector. The plan has been developed based on five major areas, which include climate change, packaging, water and waste. The purpose of preparing the sustainability report is to provide the stakeholders with necessary information, which are demonstrated briefly as follows:

• Reduction in carbon emissions
• To ensure that the levels of carbon emission are minimised with the help of transport mechanisms
• To assure that the fleet of the organisation contributes to reduction of 30% carbon emission (com.au, 2018)
• To minimise the amount of the usage of water by nearly 200 million litres every year
• To contribute to the eradication of food waste to landfill
• To conduct the retail sourcing activities depending on sustainable as well as ethical measures

Wesfarmers Limited:

The purpose of providing GRI for Wesfarmers is to provide information regarding the values it has attained and these values are people, sourcing, community, community, environment and governance (Sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au, 2018).

• In relation to people, Wesfarmers intends to concentrate on rendering safe workplace for its staffs. Thus, it concentrates on development of an effective work environment as attended on the part of gender diversity (Rahdari & Rostamy, 2015).
• For sourcing, the organisation considers ethical sourcing and suppliers. In other words, the suppliers are dedicated to develop cordial and strong associations and thus, ethical sourcing primarily strives in the most effective manner along with enhancing the social practices.
• In case of community, Wesfarmers Limited ensures its product safety to the end customers.
• For environment, Wesfarmers minimises the greenhouse emissions of the business along with bringing enhancement in the climate change resilience. Henceforth, the usage of water and waste minimises the overall landfill waste.
• In case of governance, the organisation maintains effective corporate governance policies in its various business aspects.

The main stakeholders that would be interested in the sustainability reporting of both Woolworths Group and Wesfarmers Limited comprise of the following:

Employees:

Employees are considered as a significant part of this reporting initiative, as they would like to seek information regarding the performance of various organisational aspects like safety standards. In addition, they would want to seek information whether adequate working environment is ensured to meet both the personal goals and the business goals (Lewellyn & Logsdon, 2017).

Investors and shareholders:

The shareholders and investors are considered as significant business stakeholders and they want to look at the sustainability activities of the organisations. The investors take into account the business activities and its societal influences. The sustainability reports denote the efforts that the organisation makes in order to benefit the society and these business activities enable in promoting the overall business reputation (Lewellyn & Logsdon, 2017).

Suppliers and creditors:

Both creditors and suppliers are considered as significant stakeholders of the business organisations. With the help of sustainability reporting, it becomes easy for the creditors and suppliers to obtain an insight of the business commitment in relation to sustainable development and ethical business practices (Islam, Jain & Thomson, 2016). In these cases, the creditors would be willing to extend the credit terms with the organisation, since they gain confidence in the overall business activities.

Wesfarmers Limited Sustainability Initiatives

The discussion above is related to the sustainability practices of Woolworths Limited and Wesfarmers Limited. Moreover, as both the organisations operate in the Australian retailing sector, various similarities are observed in both reports developed by them. The major similarities in the two reports are enumerated briefly as follows:

• Both the organisations ensure sustainability measures, which denote that adequate safety standards are enforced for their staffs. Moreover, both the organisations provide information about the number of injuries or accidents that took place every year and accordingly, they have implemented measures described in their sustainability reports. The motive is to minimise the number of accidents during the business operations.
• The management of Woolworths as Wesfarmers have effective policies pertaining to waste management so that there could be minimisation of waste generated from the various operating activities of the organisations.
• Both the organisations have shown their commitments to meet the expectations and needs of the stakeholders by implementing sound corporate governance and corporate social responsibility policies (GRI Content Index, 2018; com.au, 2018).
• Woolworths Group and Wesfarmers Limited have established sustainability committees that would assure sustainability in their business practices by providing regular feedback to the management of the organisations.

However, certain dissimilarities tend to exist between the reports of Woolworths Group and Wesfarmers Limited and they are demonstrated briefly as follows:

• The management of Woolworths Group has laid maximum emphasis on environmental issues in its sustainability report, while this is not similar in case of Wesfarmers Limited. This is because along with environmental issues and their respective disclosures, necessary information has been provided regarding safety and security of the employees, product safety and ethical sourcing.
• On the other hand, Woolworths has mentioned about fleet to minimise its carbon emission, while no such disclosure could be observed in case of Wesfarmers.

Quality of information:

As per the information laid out in the sustainability reports of Woolworths Group as well as Wesfarmers Limited, it could be observed that both of them have disclosed the crucial aspects that are needed to be included in the respective reports of the business organisations. It has been further assessed that the sustainability reports of both the organisations take into account the significant areas comprising of environmental consideration, staff safety, meeting shareholder expectation and sound governance policies depicted in their respective reports. Moreover, both the reports provide detailed account of the future goals and plans in relation to sustainable business development. However, it could be stated that the quality of information is better in Wesfarmers than in case of Woolworths.

Consistency with the relevant standards of the GRI framework:

According to GRI 102 related to general disclosures, it contains various disclosure requirements and these are extremely important at the time of preparing sustainability reports for the business organisations (Williams, 2016). After careful analysis of the sustainability reports of Woolworths and Wesfarmers, it could be stated that they have conformed to all the guidelines laid down in GRI standards by making pertinent disclosures in their respective reports. In accordance with GRI 403, it is crucial for the management of both the organisations to concentrate on the safety and health of the staffs involved in operational activities and they have strictly adhered to such policies, as identified from their sustainability reports. It has been found that both the organisations have minimised the number of accidents over the years, as the management has undertaken adequate measures for controlling the same. Similarly, both the organisations have followed the guidelines laid out in the other GRI standards as well.

Information needs of the stakeholders:

The expectation of each stakeholder varies based on the nature, size and operations of the business organisations. However, there is one common expectation for all categories of stakeholders. Every stakeholder wants any organisation to make contributions for fulfilling the societal needs and thus, value creation needs to be enhanced. Along with this, the governance practices of the organisations need to be designed in such a manner that they are held responsible for all the activities involved (Del Mar Alonso-Almeida et al., 2015). The management of both Woolworths Group and Wesfarmers Limited are involved in following sustainability practices and this is conducted in accordance with the standards of GRI. This implies that they have taken into account the needs as well as the expectations of the stakeholders to carry out their business activities and operations. Hence, it could be stated that both the business organisations formulate effective strategies for accomplishing the future business goals along with conducting sustainable practices.  

Conclusion:

Based on the above evaluation, it could be found that Woolworths Group as well as Wesfarmers Limited provides all the necessary information regarding sustainability reporting. In addition, both of them have followed all the necessary guidelines laid down in GRI and accordingly they have implemented measures in order to ensure sound sustainability practices.

References:

Del Mar Alonso-Almeida, M., Marimon, F., Casani, F., & Rodriguez-Pomeda, J. (2015). Diffusion of sustainability reporting in universities: current situation and future perspectives. Journal of Cleaner Production, 106, 144-154.

Flower, J. (2015). The international integrated reporting council: a story of failure. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 27, 1-17.

GRI Content Index. (2018). Sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au. Retrieved 5 June 2018, from https://sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au/our-data/gri-content-index/

Islam, M. A., Jain, A., & Thomson, D. (2016). Does the global reporting initiative influence sustainability disclosures in Asia-Pacific banks?. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, 23(3), 298-313.

Lewellyn, P. G., & Logsdon, J. M. (2017). Global Reporting Initiative G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines.

Lewellyn, P. G., & Logsdon, J. M. (2017, July). Global Reporting Initiative G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines: Do They Deliver?. In Proceedings of the International Association for Business and Society (Vol. 28, pp. 161-172).

Martínez?Ferrero, J., Garcia?Sanchez, I. M., & Cuadrado?Ballesteros, B. (2015). Effect of financial reporting quality on sustainability information disclosure. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 22(1), 45-64.

Rahdari, A. H., & Rostamy, A. A. A. (2015). Designing a general set of sustainability indicators at the corporate level. Journal of Cleaner Production, 108, 757-771.

Sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au. (2018).  Retrieved 5 June 2018, from https://sustainability.wesfarmers.com.au/media/2222/2017-wesfarmers-sustainability-full-report.pdf

Williams, C. A. (2016). The Global Reporting Initiative, Transnational Corporate Accountability, and Global Regulatory Counter-Currents. UC Irvine Journal of International, Transnational and Comparative Law, 1(1), 67.

Woolworthsgroup.com.au. (2018). Retrieved 5 June 2018, from https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/icms_docs/189426_2017-cr-report-gri-index.pdf

Woolworthsgroup.com.au. (2018).  Retrieved 5 June 2018, from https://www.woolworthsgroup.com.au/icms_docs/189425_corporate-responsibility-report-2017.pd