Page 19 - CIMA SCS Workbook August 2018 - Day 2 Suggested Solutions

CIMA AUGUST 2018 – STRATEGIC CASE STUDY

CHAPTER TEN

EXERCISE 1

Briefing notes on the GRI’s G4 guidelines and the Balanced Scorecard
Prepared by: Senior Finance Manager

For the attention of: Den Rice, Chief Financial Officer, FNG

SUSTAINABILITY REPORTING USING THE GRI’S G4 GUIDELINES

Background – financial and non-financial reporting
Financial statements provide historic financial information, but they don’t provide a full picture of
how the business is performing. To help users to assess performance, it is helpful to provide
information relating to other aspects, such as:
how the business is managed

its future prospects
the policy on the environment

its attitude towards social responsibility etc.
In recent years, there has been increasing pressure for businesses to provide more information in
their annual reports beyond just the financial statements since non-financial information can also
be important to users.
On FNG’s website, we have presented four brief paragraphs to show our commitment to
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), but our competitor Nuncia has gone further than this and
incorporated more detailed CSR information as part of its annual report.

The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) - overview
Important additional non-financial information can be reported in a number of ways. For
example, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has produced guidelines that propose additional
disclosures in addition to the normal disclosures required in the financial statements.

Colin Edgar has been looking at Nuncia’s annual report, and has been impressed by the way
Nuncia has used the GRI guidelines to give “a really positive impression of the company’s
corporate social responsibility achievements”.

The GRI’s G4 guidelines

The GRI’s “G4” guidelines encourage organisations to disclose:
economic factors,

78 KAPLAN PUBLISHING