Fluor
Advancing the sustainability agenda
Helping a market leader in specialty pharmaceuticals and medical technologies evolve its story—and revitalize its brand.
Situation
How can one of the world’s most admired engineering and construction companies adapt its sustainability report to reflect expanding expectations in sustainability practices and reporting?
In recent years, Fluor had made tremendous strides in implementing sustainability policies and practices in its own operations and on client projects, including the publication of the company’s first Sustainability Manual. The company advanced a “triple bottom line” approach that placed sustainability at the heart of three interconnected corporate goals: economic growth, social progress and environmental stewardship. As a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact, Fluor aligned its operating philosophies, standards and processes with 10 principles in the areas of human rights, labor, environment and anti-corruption—further evidence of its staunch commitment to the sustainability agenda. While Fluor chronicled this progress annually, the company now wanted to take its sustainability report to the next level. Fluor turned to Baker for help in applying reporting best practices—and in achieving an even a higher degree of transparency, accountability and accessibility that kept pace with current sustainability trends.
Solution
Baker focused on three areas to improve the clarity, usability and visual appeal of Fluor’s latest sustainability report: adding emphasis, taming complexity and progressive indexing.
The first, adding emphasis, involved highlighting case studies of three engineering and construction projects that demonstrated global sustainability in action, from the ground up. Baker used a magazine-style format to showcase these examples in an engaging narrative supported by relevant imagery and pull quotes.
The second, taming complexity, focused on communicating multifaceted sustainability issues in a more comprehensible way. Previous reports dutifully explicated these issues; however, their meaning was lost in the detail, and conventional imagery did little to clarify them. Instead, Baker distilled important data into digestible, high-impact information graphics that simplified complex issues and brought the key takeaways to life.
The third, progressive indexing, sought to improve usability with regard to identifying the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) performance indicators used in the report. Baker displayed this information in two ways— conventionally as an index at the back and progressively as notations highlighted throughout the report narrative. The goal was to accommodate the preferences of diverse readers by giving them an easy way to find what they wanted at the pace they chose.
Results
Fluor’s sustainability report was a highly readable overview of the company’s performance that reflected the growing rigor and sophistication of current reporting and set the stage for further evolution. In support of Fluor’s ongoing efforts to advance sustainability and its effective reporting, Baker encouraged the company to take a longer view of key issues and reframe how it addressed them through such practices as goal setting—a process started with its latest report. Doing so would allow Fluor to capture incremental progress on key sustainability issues and demonstrate in future reports the company’s performance over time, based on metrics tailored to its unique organization.