Foreword

The Centre for Sustainable Design (CfSD) has developed a programme focusing on design aspects of environmental communications, with a particular focus on corporate environment reporting. As part of the process CfSD have organised a series of expert workshops for those involved in corporate environmental reporting. What emerged from this process was the lack of information on Electronic Environmental Reporting (EER), and its context within corporate environmental communications. A checklist has been developed to support companies through the process of planning, developing and implementing EERs. Various organisations have been involved in this process and they are thanked for their support in this project.

1.BACKGROUND

EER is a natural progression from paper-based corporate environmental reports (CERs). Over 120 EERs have been defined by The Centre for Environmental Informatics at the University of Sunderland in the UK, these include separate internet-based EERs and sub-sections of corporate websites. The majority of EERs are internet-based sites and these have grown substantially over the last two years. However, there are a growing number of examples of intranet-based sites e.g. Electrolux's Eco-literacy site which has been developed to raise awareness and understanding amongst employees, particularly highlighting information on separate business units and business functions. Extranet-based EERs appear to be in the very early stages of development. The majority of EER are slight adaptions of existing paper-based CERs. Some companies are experimenting with making specific environmental performance data available via PDF (Adobe Acrobat), diskettes and CD-ROMs. A clear lesson from existing experience is to keep the design of the EER simple, using logical structures as there are still accessibility issues at the user end. There are also potential reduced environmental impacts associated with moving from paper-based CER towards downloadable information via electronic media.

2.EER media:stakeholder mix

EER should be thought of as part of an integrated approach to communicating environmental information. EER should be seen as a complement to other forms of environmental communications. Some of its key strengths are that sites can be up-dated continuously, rather than beimg a once a year exercise associated with paper-based CER.For example, the stakeholders for EER might be as follows:

Intranet   Employees
Extranet  Customers (major)
                  Suppliers (major)
                  Shareholders (major)
Internet   Customers (minor)
                  Suppliers (minor)
                  Shareholders (minor)
                  Academia
                  Government
                  Pressure groups
                  Competitors
                  Investment community

A key issue is how proactively or reactively the organisation wants to position itself on environmental issues. This should be reflected in the intranet, extranet or internet site design. Another consideration is how proactive the organisation wants to be in advising stakeholders about the site i.e. sowing site details in search engines, joining environmental listserver groups or proactive email marketing. An integral part of the EER strategy should be collecting demographic information about stakeholders who are accessing the sites: who are they? which industry sectors or business units do they come from? where, do they come from geographically? which pages have they looked at?

3.STRATEGIC ISSUES

Before the development of an EER strategy, various key questions should be clearly understood:

1. What business is the company in?
2. Where will the business be in 3-5 years?
3. What are the key environmental issues related to the business now and in the next 3-5 years?

3.1 Environmental management

1. What is the environmental policy

• group or corporate level
• business unit level

2. What are the environmental objectives

• quantitative
• qualitative

3. What reference does the environmental policy make to internal or external communications

3.2 Environmental communications

1. Do you have corporate communications objectives, strategy and tactics written down? and does it address environmental or broader sustainability issues?

2. Does the corporate communications strategy relate to the overall group and separately to business units?

3. Are corporate communications issues controlled centrally and/or decentralised?

4. Who has responsibility for environmental communications?

5. What are the environmental communications objectives in relation to:

• employees
• external stakeholders

6. How does the company communicate environmental information to stakeholders?

7. What sort of environmental information does it communicate to stakeholders?

8. What environmental communication tools does the business use at present? internally and externally?

9. What sort of environmental information are stakeholders interested in? has research been undertaken?

10. How frequently is environmental information communicated to stakeholders?

Electronic environmental reporting (EER)

1. What role will the EER play in relation to the overall environmental communications mix? and how does this fit withinthe overall corporate communications strategy?

2. What is the relationship between the EER and the paper-based CER?

3. What is the overall objective of the EER?

4. How will the organisation strategically progress EER? from intranet to extranet to internet?

5. How will this relationship change over the next 3, 5 and 10 years? taking account of any changes in business direction

6. How does intranet fit within the overall approach to communicating environmental information to employees?

4. Intranet

4.1 Employee targeting

1. How does the use of the intranet 'fit' within the broader stakeholder interaction strategy?

2. Has the company undertaken qualitative research into employee awareness, attitudes and understanding?

3. What is the demographic profile of employees? and how should you the adapt the intranet strategy according to the characteristics of employees by functional units, sites and businesses?

• age
• sex
• education
• culture
• IT awareness/literacy/ability

4. What are the lifestyle characteristics of employees within different functional units, sites and businesses, for example:

• 'active' recyclers
• 'active' non-recyclers

5. What are the computer usage patterns of employees?

6. What is the level of awareness of environmental awareness throughout the organisation?

• zero
• basic
• intermediate
• advanced

7. What is environmental awareness at each level of the organisation?

• strategic
• tactical
• operational

8. What level of environmental training have the employees received?

9. Who are your key and most influential internal stakeholders

10. Which internal stakeholders will you need to influence to enable 'multiplier effects'

11. Who are the advocates or 'champions' amongst employees?

12. How are you going to manage 'laggards'?

13. Translate environmental messages into business and functional language e.g. (a) agrochemicals information for agrochemical businesses and (b) marketing information for marketing functions; ensure that you don't hit 'the green wall'!

14. Do you define suppliers and customers as internal or external stakeholders?

15. If employees are visualised as customers and environmental information as products: how do you get your customers to buy your product

16. The intranet is the process: what outputs do you want to achieve through the process e.g. better informed employees; what are your expectations?

• most optimistic
• most likely
• most pessimistic

17. What is the intranet usage pattern e.g.visits?

• x40 day
• x200 day
• x1000 day
• x10000 week

18. What level of information technology do employees have access to?

• pc e.g. IBM
• modem e.g. 9000 or 14000
• browser e.g. Netscape 3.0 or Internet Explorer 4.0
• software e.g. Windows 3.1 or Windows '95

19. Do all employees have access to intranet through their own machines? or will they have to access it through others' machines? or look at internet (as opposed to intranet) to get access to corporate information through computers at home?

20. The intranet site can be used as a quick data collection device e.g. by posing specific environmental questions to visitors?

4.2 Planning and development

1. Agree objectives for the intranet project

• immediate-term (0-6 months)
• short-term (6-12 months)
• medium-term (12-24 months)
• longer-term (24 months plus)

2. What are the realistic objectives for intranet development given finance, manpower and timescales

3. Who 'owns' the intranet site within organisation

• overall strategic responsibility
• operational management and control

4. Ensure the corporate webmaster is aware of the EER strategy

5. Which internal business functions should be involved in the project?

• project manager
• planning, management and control
• corporate communications
• process
• public affairs
• process
• environment
• content
• information technology
• hardware, software, telecommunications

6. Will you use in-house or ex-house designers or the webmaster's design skills?

7. What criteria should you use to choose ex-house designers?

• cost
• quality
• experience e.g. few EERs have been developed by ex-house designers
• speed to development
• added-value e.g. team-based or individual skills in design, information architecture, programming, company and environmental knowledge and expertise
• other

8. Will you have to use existing designers used by corporate communications? if so, how do you adapt to this?

9. How will you link your EER intranet-site to other environmental communications tools:

• extranet
• internet
• paper-based CERs
• diskettes
• CD-ROMs
• leaflets
• newsletters

10. Will the intranet site be driven by the paper-based report?

11. What are the objectives for the site

• to raise awareness
• to generate x hits per 100 employees

12. What experience does the company and project management team have in relation to intranet development

13. What other internal intranet sites exist? what lessons can be learnt from the development of these projects

14. Are you competing for visitor time with other intranet sites? what levels of attendance do other sites achieve?

15. How much understanding and use of intranet is there in the organisation

16. What are best practice examples of other intranet sites

• other 'specific issue' internal corporate sites
• direct competitors
• industry sector
• other sectors

17. What sort of browser does the organisation use: 2.0, 3.0 or 4.0? does it differ by business unit? and geographically?

18. What is the relationship between the intranet to extranet and internet sites?

19. Should you build in a keyword search engine at the frond end of the site to help visitors through the site based on their specific interests?

20. Consider developing a simple quiz to generate a profile of employee understanding and awareness? what incentives should you use to ensure you get a good response?

21. Has the architecture of the site been designed to fit the employee profile?

22. What is the policy about updating the site?

• new information
• amendments to existing information

23. If you add new information will you have to have it vetted by corporate communications? and/or an internal or external legal function?

24. How will the company deal with 'new' issues and sensitive topics?what will be the policy? i.e. add to site within 24 hours

25. How are you going to launch the site

26. How are going to raise awareness of the site prior and after launch?

27. How are you going to keep people coming back to the site?

28. Have you thought about adding bulletin boards, discussion fora, and specific listservers to the EER intranet-site?

29. Establish listservers on specific particular topics e.g. recycling

30. What sort of statistical reports should be produced on site attendance:

• frequency e..g. monthly, quarterly, annual
• content e.g. what should be the key performance metrics
• number of visitors, types of visitors, etc

31. Do you understand how to use statistical packages and analyse their strengths/weaknesses?

32. Highlight the EER intranet site on the corporate intranet site where employees frequently visit

33. Explore proactive email marketing for your intranet site through the internal email system

34. Should you add hotlinks to related internal intranet and external internet sites within the text or in a specific section

35. Do you have a clearly defined population or target market; if so, statistical modelling might be a useful mechanism to measure changing awareness and behaviour over time

5.EXTRANET

Many of the issues raised in the Intranet section are relevant for the development of Extranet-based EER to communicate and feedback environmental information to key external stakehoulders

1. Who are your key external stakeholders that have an major impact on business performance?

2. Are suppliers and customers internal or external stakeholders? how do you define the boundaries of your organisation?

3. What type of environmental information do you need to communicate to and receive from key external stakeholders?

4. How do you establish a password protected system for key external stakeholders?

6.INTERNET

Many of the issues raised in the Intranet section are also relevant for the development an Internet-based EER

1. What rules are you going to establish about managing the project? what can you do by email? what should you do 'face to face'?

2. What is the objective of your site?

• corporate awareness/image
• informational
• direct sales
• hybrid

4. Complete a decision-tree or information architecture map to visualise the development of the Internet site

5. Do you have the expertise to build the site internally?

6. Develop budgets, timescales and responsibilities?

7. What corporate image do you want to project?

8. Do you have corporate design guidelines on electronic communications?

9. What sort of management reports do you want on the site?

• frequency: monthly/quarterly/annually
• what types of statistics do you want out of the analysis

10. Build in the use of web analysis software from the start?

11. What metrics are appropriate to measure the effectiveness of the site e.g. volume and type of visitors?

12. Ensure you check the accessibility of your site with different types and levels of browser before it is launched

13. Constantly seek feedback on the development process from 'key friendlies' i.e. does the site work, what does the site look like, etc before and after the launch of the site

14. Ensure the site is written with the lowest reasonable browser e.g. Netscape 3.0 to maximise the accessibility of the site

15. Send email details of your site into key publically accessible environmental electronic lists e.g. United Nation's Infoterra list

16. Build your email database? with sub-codes for specific stakeholders

17. If there is no name for a person number them 'unknown 1','unknown 2', etc this will make life easier as your database grows

18. Research email numbers from emails that you receive

19. Don't over email people

20. Send apologies for cross-postings

21. Be careful about email messages: sometimes if names are 'bounced back' with messages such as "fatal delivery" it may only be a transitionary error

22. Develop form-based mechanisms to collect email numbers

23. Organise links to other related sites that may increase the traffic to your site

24. Sow your site reference into search engines

25. What are the strengths/weaknesses of your independent server provider (ISP)?

26. Assess the economic stability of your ISP?

27. What technical programming expertise does your ISP possess?

28. Should you add hotlinks within the text or in a specific sections on the site

29. Consider the addition of a form to search for the information that the visitor requires? explore Do-It-Yourself (DIY) reports?

30. Ensure that you have a policy to remove out of date information

31. Develop page highlighting new news

32. Ensure you are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of the use of Java, Shockwave, Frames and CGI script bearing in mind the need to maximise the accessibility of the site

33. Ensure any additions to the site are passed by the legal or corporate communications functions

7. MICRO MANAGEMENT

7.1 Project management

1. Designate a project management structure

• from the internal customer's perspective
• from the internal or external site developer's perspective

2. Establish a project development plan

3. Establish clear reporting mechanisms

4. Establish a budget

• site development and design
• site maintenance

7.2 Design

1. What are the corporate design guidelines?

2. What are the corporate design guidelines for electronic media?

3. What should be the balance between graphics and text

4. What style should the site project?

5. What is the 'lowest common denominator' design approach to ensure the maximum proportion of visitors will be able to view the site?

6. Develop and design a clear homepage

• what is the site about
• ensure contents are simply displayed
• highlight
• unique features
• need to know

7. Could animation? and voice be used?

8. If it is a global site accessible worldwide through different types and levels of browsers, have you tested it for:

• accessibility i.e. can all employees see the site
• visual appearance i.e. blocks of colour versus phasing
• typeface and symbols i.e. £ versus UK pounds

9. The style and typeface of forms should be blended with the rest of the site design

10. Do you want a counter to display the number of hits on the site

11. How interactive should the site be?

• chat bars
• online conferences
• bulletin boards
• frequently asked questions (FAQs)
• personalised responses

12. Establish procedures for design 'sign-off'

13. Do you have internal library images? or will you have to purchase these images? or employ freelancers to take photographs?

14. Who owns copyright of photographs?

15. How many pages are going to be on the site?

16. Do you have an internal web-designer? or should you employ a freelancer or an agency?

17.. Ensure that your web-designer has some knowledge of information architecture

18. Establish clear brief for the web-designer?

7.3 Copy

1. Ensure you manage the copywriting process effectively with clear goals

2. Do you have an in-house copywriter? or will you need to employ a freelancer or agency?

3. What experience do freelancers or agencies have of:

• environmental issues
• intranet, extranet or internet

4. Will copywriters send information on diskette, email or fax?

5. Should the project manager, web designer or webmaster be the central node for information supply through email?

6. Where in the organisation is appropriate information located? what is the best way to track down this information? establish meetings with key internal business functions e.g. finance, IT, manufacturing or operations

7. How do you design the information architecture for the site to allow for different levels of awareness and understanding:

• zero
• basic
• intermediate
• advanced

8. What reports and publications can you make downloadable from the site? what are implications in relation to the system's memory capacity?

9. Will you need to edit existing material before it is made a 'downloadable'

10. Will you need to originate new copy? will specific research need to be completed?

11. Establish procedures for copy 'sign-off'

12. Is confidential information to be used? with restricted access

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