And then there’s the question about what happens after a company reaches its goals. At FishWise, we feel strongly that it’s important for a company to annually report on the status of its sustainable seafood program, even after a goal has been achieved, to ensure that the program stays on track. In many ways, transparency into how well a company is maintaining a credible seafood program is just as important as publicly disclosing progress on forward-facing goals and initiatives.

Staff and organizational pride is a clear benefit of transparent reporting for all of our partners. When a company has strong internal alignment and support for a sustainability goal, progress happens more quickly.

Transparency is becoming increasingly important to consumers. It’s a smart idea for companies to stay ahead of that trend by publicly reporting on their goals even after they’ve been achieved. Target’s annual CSR report is an excellent example of a company creating a platform to communicate to stakeholders about its progress.

Transparency helps build a company’s positive reputation since it increases trust. 

Transparent reporting on environmental and social initiatives can also be used by potential investors to evaluate a company’s leadership and values on important global issues.

Our partners use different methods to report publicly, such as blogs, press releases, CSR reports, and website updates, so we’ve had to tailor our communication styles and advice to suit our partners’ audiences and communication platforms.  Our level of involvement with these communications also varies across partnerships. Some of our partners rely on us to provide content about their sustainability efforts, while other companies have dedicated personnel to facilitate these communications. For the latter, our primary role is to review the content to ensure its accuracy.

For the future, we plan to continue working with our partners to maintain transparency, be that on progress against new goals involving shelf-stable tuna, social responsibility, and traceability, or just as importantly, on how well our partners are maintaining their existing commitments.

Target is a good example of a partner who is committed to transparency as a way forward, not just a trend to follow.