Finland

3.2 Reporting on corporate social responsibility [page 25]

Reporting on corporate social responsibility may be a significant factor in monitoring the human rights impacts and risks of companies. In the Resolution on Corporate Social Responsibility, the Finnish Government encourages companies to publish the non-financial data on the social and environmental impact of their activities. The Ministry of Employment and the Economy and the Ministry of the Environment are involved in organising the annual competition for reporting on corporate social responsibility. The competitions have been organised since 1996 with a view to encourage companies to report on CSR. When reporting becomes mandatory for some of the companies (cf. Section i.3 on non-financial reporting), the question of reforming the competition must be addressed.

International information on the content of companies’ responsibility reports is available in a database maintained by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). In Finland, Corporate Responsibility Network FIBS acts as a partner for GRI for all Finnish companies and organisations to register their responsibility reports in the database. By means of the database, companies’ responsibility reports can be compared by branch of activity and by geographical area. The database also provides useful information concerning the international corporate social responsibility standard to which each report refers.

As a follow-up measure, the working group proposes that

• human rights be adopted as the annual theme of the reporting competition. Principal responsible party: Ministry of Employment and the Economy, schedule before the end of 2015.