The primary goal of sustainability reporting in Australia has not changed since the concept was introduced in the late 1980s. It’s still about transparency, stakeholder engagement and communicating performance across a broad suite of metrics.

But within major companies, a more subtle shift has occurred.

Sustainability reporting is no longer a means for environmentally and socially responsible businesses to differentiate themselves from their peers. For these organisations, sustainability reporting is now something the market expects. It is no coincidence that over 80% of the top 20 ASX companies produce a sustainability or corporate social responsibility report.

At Santos – Australia’s leading gas supplier – sustainability reporting continues to evolve. We started our reporting journey in 2004, with our First Steps Sustainability Report. Looking back, that first report was about committing to triple-bottom-line reporting and establishing our baseline. It led to greater integration of sustainability and further performance disclosures as we continued to evolve and improve our consecutive reports.

Our sustainability reports are a vehicle that we use to engage with stakeholders, showcase our values, and disclose our performance. So the look and feel of the message we deliver in our report is important; it says a lot about who we are as a company.

One of the challenges of reporting is condensing complex, often abstract, concepts into meaningful and easy-to-understand graphics. Our partner in achieving this, a Melbourne business-to-business communications firm, has been integral to the quality of our product. It is more than simply producing graphics – it is about embarking on the journey with us, understanding our values and performance, and using this to form the landscape of our report.

At Santos we continue to evolve our reports, while maintaining the core principles of sustainability reporting: engagement, transparency and good quality data. Sustainability reporting in Australia may not have changed much thus far, but its evolution is upon us.

Susie Smith and Adrian Marshall are from Santos, an Australian energy pioneer since 1954. Santos’ vision is to be a leading energy company for Australia and Asia by delivering its base business of tapping our resource riches, being a great place to work and doing it safely and sustainably.