External Reporting Standards
Global Reporting Initiative
Baxter recognizes the importance of external sustainability reporting standards to promote relevant, transparent and comparable disclosure of company performance. The company was one of the first to pilot the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Guidelines in 1999 and has served as a GRI Organizational Stakeholder (OS) since the program's inception in 2004.
The GRI Guidelines provide a valuable perspective to Baxter in its reporting process. GRI reporting principles (see below) offer a framework to test whether the company addresses key aspects of disclosure. Reviewing report content against the range of GRI performance indicators helps Baxter to identify possible reporting and performance gaps and areas that may warrant further disclosure. This process is also useful to compare the company against reporting leaders and others in the industry.
This report aligns with the GRI G3 Guidelines, application level B. Baxter provides a detailed GRI Index online.
The following table describes how Baxter addresses GRI G3 reporting principles.
| GRI G3 REPORTING PRINCIPLE | RELEVANCE TO BAXTER |
|---|---|
| Principles for Defining Report Content | |
| Materiality - The information in a report should cover topics and Indicators* that reflect the organization's significant economic, environmental, and social impacts, or that would substantively influence the assessments and decisions of stakeholders. | Baxter continually refines its approach to identifying and reporting on its material sustainability issues. This report includes a summary of Baxter's sustainability priorities and goals, as well as an update for each priority that includes progress against each related goal. |
| Stakeholder Inclusiveness - The reporting organization should identify its stakeholders and explain in the report how it has responded to their reasonable expectations and interests. | Baxter outlines and describes its key stakeholder groups, and references examples of how it interacts with each, on the Stakeholder Engagement page. Examples are also included throughout the report. |
| Sustainability Context - The report should present the organization's performance in the wider context of sustainability. | The Chairman and CEO letter presents Baxter's performance in this manner. Many sections begin with a brief introduction framing the importance of the issue and its relevance to sustainability and the company. The priority updates describe the relevance of many of the priority areas from a global sustainability context. |
| Completeness - Coverage of the material topics and Indicators and definition of the report boundary should be sufficient to reflect significant economic, environmental, and social impacts and enable stakeholders to assess the reporting organization's performance in the reporting period. | Baxter continues to improve its reporting to more fully address the range of sustainability issues. In addition to extensive coverage of Baxter's sustainability priorities, this report includes sections in a broad range of areas such as Environment, Health and Safety, Public Policy, Product Responsibility and Supply Chain. |
| Principles for Ensuring Report Quality | |
| Balance - The report should reflect positive and negative aspects of the organization's performance to enable a reasoned assessment of overall performance. | Baxter reports on a consistent set of core performance indicators (see Summary Data Table) and the company's sustainability priorities and goals to illustrate positive as well as negative performance trends. |
| Comparability - Issues and information should be selected, compiled, and reported consistently. Reported information should be presented in a manner that enables stakeholders to analyze changes in the organization's performance over time, and could support analysis relative to other organizations. | When possible, this report provides five (and in some cases six) years of performance data, including relevant breakdowns and progress against targets on an absolute and normalized basis, to allow readers to evaluate the company's performance. Data are generally included under performance graphs for clarity, and key information is presented in a Summary Data Table for ease of use. Industry performance data are included for comparison when available, such as occupational illness and injury rates and share performance. Data beyond the timeframe of the report are included in past reports on the Downloads page. |
| Accuracy - The reported information should be sufficiently accurate and detailed for stakeholders to assess the reporting organization's performance. | Baxter uses a combination of internal processes and external verification for selected sections (see Assurance) to ensure the reliability of information presented in this report. Significant restatements of data are noted. |
| Timeliness - Reporting occurs on a regular schedule and information is available in time for stakeholders to make informed decisions. | Baxter produces its Sustainability Report annually, as soon as is feasible after content and data are compiled, analyzed, reviewed and verified in the case of Environment, Health and Safety, Supply Chain and Product Transport content and data. |
| Clarity - Information should be made available in a manner that is understandable and accessible to stakeholders using the report. | Baxter strives to present the information in this report clearly and concisely. The company continues to enhance the report website to further increase accessibility, including several changes made this year to the structure and design. The report includes an interactive graphic illustrating Baxter's priorities and related performance goals, and the Web and print versions include data summaries. |
| Reliability - Information and processes used in the preparation of a report should be gathered, recorded, compiled, analyzed, and disclosed in a way that could be subject to examination and that establishes the quality and materiality of the information. | Bureau Veritas verified the Environment, Health and Safety, Supply Chain, and Product Transport sections of this report. In addition, many of the financial data included in this report are taken from the consolidated financial statements contained in the Baxter International Inc. 2010 Annual Report. These financial statements are audited by Baxter's independent registered public accounting firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. |
| * | According to GRI: indicators elicit comparable information on the economic, environmental and social performance of the organization. |
Sustainability Priority Updates and Case Studies
In addition to sections describing the company's policies, programs and performance across the range of sustainability, the Baxter 2010 Sustainability Report also includes the following:
- Sustainability priority updates describe Baxter's approach for and progress against each of the company's nine sustainability priorities and related goals, including plans for 2011 as appropriate.
- Case studies provide specific examples of strong performance in areas such as Ethics and Compliance, Employees, Environment, Health and Safety, Product Responsibility, Supply Chain and Community Support.
