Annual Community Reports

Increasingly, the relationship between a manufacturing facility and its community is scrutinized, challenged, validated, measured, and ultimately redefined as the public's expectations of the performance of industrial neighbors evolve. One indication of a socially responsible facility is the extent to which it engages in dialogue with the community, typically using a combination of face-to-face, printed, and electronic communication tools. One of these tools, a community annual report, can be particularly effective when it addresses local issues and concerns, and is produced as one component of an overall communications strategy.

Community annual reports have been around for decades in one form or another, and the good ones—those that have credibility with their target audiences—go well beyond being public relations vehicles for the publishing facilities. A public that has grown comparatively more astute and less accepting over time now requires, and in some cases demands, the good, bad, and ugly of facility operations that affect their quality of life. And depending on the historical operations of a facility—including its ability to quickly communicate in response to incidents that directly impact neighbors, such as noise, odor, lights, and possibly emergencies—even a comprehensive annual report may not be sufficient. Recurring or significant problems that disrupt quiet residential life are clear justifications for more frequent communications.

The starting point for a community annual report is understanding what constitutes community relations and social performance; who are the key, relevant stakeholders; and what constitutes meaningful dialogue with the community. Only then can a baseline be established and a go-forward strategy implemented that are critical to measuring the ongoing effectiveness of a community annual report.

Community relations is the active management of the relationship between a facility and the local community interests around it. Community relations may mean no more than “getting to know your neighbors,” talking with them and inviting them to visit. It might involve good site management—ensuring that neighbors are satisfied that when issues occur their concerns are handled promptly and professionally. Two valuable benefits of good community relations are goodwill and trust, which are almost always achieved through sincere effort, action, and alliance with community residents. Not to be overlooked are the employees, including retirees, who can be among the best community ambassadors.

Social performance includes all the ways a facility's activities affect society. At a local level it includes employment, contracting, operations, community involvement, security, social investments, and health, safety, and environmental issues. It also reflects the local priorities and issues of significance as identified through stakeholder engagement. Nationally it might include the impact on U.S. economic and social development; globally it may include the impact and contribution of the company's products and activities.

A stakeholder is anyone who has an interest in or can influence a business or facility. Stakeholder cooperation or involvement is needed for the facility to obtain and maintain its “license to operate.” Stakeholders may be shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, contractors, families of workers, business partners, people whose livelihoods are dependent on the facility, and people who live and work near the facility—the community—which includes local media, elected officials, activists, civic leaders, schools, and residential and industrial neighbors. It is this community stakeholder group, along with employees and retirees, who are the primary audience for a community annual report. These people are at the front line of a facility's efforts to develop and sustain community goodwill and trust, also known as reputation management. In good times, this bank of reputation receives deposits through good operational performance and relationship building; on the other hand, reputation hits or withdrawals occur when facility performance negatively affects the community, such as during an accident that requires public action or, at the very least, when operations are more noticeable than usual to nearby residents. Slow response to and public perception of indifference to a problem [Page 28]caused by a facility, particularly through inadequate communication, also can drain the reputation account.

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