How does the ISO
26000 guidance relate to...
GRI’s Reporting Principles
GRI’s Reporting Principles are fundamental
to achieving transparency in sustainability
reporting and therefore should be applied
by all organizations when preparing a
sustainability report. The Principles are
divided into two groups: Principles for
Defining Report Content and Principles for
Defining Report Quality.
Principles for Defining Report Content
GRI’s Principles for Defining Report Content
describe the process to be applied to identify
what content the report should cover by
considering the organization’s activities,
impacts, and the substantive expectations
and interests of its stakeholders. There
are a total of four Principles: Materiality,
Stakeholder Inclusiveness, Sustainability
Context and Completeness.
Materiality
Both ISO
26000 and the GRI Guidelines cover
the most common economic, environmental
and social topics and impacts that ought to be
addressed by organizations. However, while
ISO26000 is intended to give guidance on the
actions and expectations for organizations
to address each of these topics, the GRI
Guidelines provide guidance on what to
report for each of these topics specifically.
By following ISO
26000, “an organization
should review all the core subjects to identify
which issues are relevant. The identification
of relevant issues should be followed by
an assessment of the significance of the
organization’s impacts. The significance of an
impact should be considered with reference
both to the stakeholders concerned and to the
way in which the impact affects sustainable
development”
The GRI Guidelines take a similar approach
and provide extensive the report, including
guidance on how to assess the significance
of impacts and the relevance to stakeholders