Want to get more from your sustainability report? Looking for innovative ways to engage your stakeholders? Want to get feedback from sustainability experts on your corporate citizenship activities? If any of these questions resonate with you, you'll be intrigued and inspired by what GE is doing. Read on for details!
In late 2012, SSC President Jennifer Woofter participated in GE’s experiment with in-depth online stakeholder engagement. Fifty sustainability experts from around the world were invited to a week-long virtual dialogue to provide feedback their new Citizenship Web portal.
The Expert Exchange asked stakeholders to take a look and evaluate the pros and cons concerning the, “design and content in separate threads devoted to specific reporting areas: GE Citizenship Website containing “evergreen” information; Planet section of the GE Citizenship Website; and, 2011 Sustainable Growth Report Microsite.”
Rather than typical online stakeholder engagements, such as a structured series of scheduled webinars, surveys, and Twitter chats, GE utilized a virtual dialogue platform where stakeholders could weigh in across multiple time zones at their convenience. Members of GE's Citizenship Team weighed in throughout the process, so the result was a detailed and robust discussion, between GE and its stakeholder panel -- and among the panelists themselves. SSC was honored to participate, and we thoroughly enjoyed hearing from other experts as we explored the GE portal. You can read more about the GE Citizenship Reporting Expert Exchange Summary here.
We are looking forward to future collaborative engagements with the GE Citizenship team and seeing how they develop their reporting areas further as well as the sustainability community as a whole. To read more about the Expert Exchange and GE’s Citizenship Reporting visit their site or continue the conversation with Jennifer Woofter on Twitter (@jenniferwoofter) using #ExpertExchange.