Global best practice in integrated annual reporting 2025

What is an annual report for? The question may seem surprising given the time and effort large companies plough into corporate reporting, but it’s one that we’re hearing more and more frequently.

This year’s annual reporting season feels like a test for many companies. The EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has added a layer of complexity to reporting, some of which brings welcome transparency.

However, in the rush to satisfy compliance requirements, there is a danger that the annual report’s purpose becomes diluted. What the annual report is “for”— to tell a compelling story of the company’s year and its strategy for future development—remains unchanged.

Hollis & Bean has reviewed 2024 annual reports from large companies in France, Switzerland and the UK. Based on our research, we identified five best practices for creating and publishing annual reports.

1. Integrate sustainability throughout your report

The CSRD aims to standardize sustainability reporting across industries. But datapoints are indicators: they do not tell a story.

Differentiate your company by integrating your sustainability approach into your business narrative from page one, and by illustrating every section of your annual report with compelling figures, stories and initiatives.

Best practice: Sika

Sika’s annual report magazine models this well: sustainability targets and ambitions appear throughout the document. Not only that, but the company’s tangible environmental impacts and achievements are explored at length throughout the report. By building these topics into every section of the document, Sika shows that sustainability is deeply embedded in its strategy and culture.

Best practice: Novo Nordisk

Novo Nordisk also integrates sustainability effectively into its overall corporate narrative. The strategy section of its 2023 report begins with a spread on “Purpose and sustainability,” closely linking the two and showing that they are mutually dependent. Every section, from a case study on fighting childhood obesity to the governance overview, ties the company’s actions back to its sustainability ambitions and actions.

2. Humanize your data

An annual report must include financial and non-financial data; but how you present that data can make all the difference.

Your key figures become more tangible and impactful when presented alongside their real-world impact on consumers, communities and employees. As you plan your report, make room for highlights on the people making and using your products to give readers a real feel for how your business works.

Best practice: Haleon

Haleon successfully humanizes its data from the very first page of its 2023 annual report, which features photos of employees. Throughout the report, images, breakout boxes and infographics all highlight the human element of the business. For instance, the strategy section includes a breakout box for each market segment that highlights why the sector is important, and the role Haleon plays in it.   

Best practice: Nestlé

Nestlé also models this best practice in its 2023 annual review—which also begins with spreads of employee photos. Alongside each component of its strategy, the report highlights a product or initiative that exemplifies its aims and progress toward its goals. For example, the section “Delivering novel technologies” features a graph, quotation from a team member and extended description of N3 milk, a new, nutritional milk developed by Nestlé. Rather than presenting pipeline goals and investment, the company highlights the positive impacts of its R&D on consumers and employees.

3. Give your CEO an authentic voice

Writing a CEO letter may sometimes feel like painting by numbers. Your opening statement must give a clear picture of how the company is progressing against its strategic goals to achieve growth. It also needs to give a financial snapshot of the previous year and establish sentiment toward the year ahead.

However, the best statements in 2023 went beyond this and embraced the CEO’s personality and unique perspective.

Best practice: Air Liquide

Air Liquide’s CEO statement stands out as a great example. Presented as a Q&A, the letter touches on many different initiatives and milestones without listing them or becoming too text heavy. The initiatives discussed demonstrate positive, sustainability-related progress. Finally, placing the CEO statement directly before the strategy overview links the two sections and demonstrates effective leadership and ownership of the strategy.

Best practice: Tate & Lyle

Tate & Lyle effectively leveraged the CEO statement. This comprehensive introduction encompasses the group’s strategic decisions, business model and purpose. It intersperses key figures and infographics within the text to help contextualize and support the CEO Nick Hampton’s convictions and ambitions. It is well-written, compelling, and includes examples and personal statements that are undeniably unique to the CEO, and to Tate & Lyle.

4. Develop clear, high-quality infographics

Complex ideas are often best expressed via an infographic. Taking the time to illustrate your company’s strategy, operations and processes with clear, effective and impactful visuals pays off with expert and non-expert readers alike.

Best practice: Holcim

Holcim effectively summarizes impacts and solutions throughout its value chain in its How we are decarbonizing Holcim infographic. It makes a complex process easy to follow using 3D representations of industrial processes and transportation, accompanied by labels.

Best practice: Air Liquide

 Air Liquide’s business model diagram also stands out as a particularly effective infographic. It shows how the group’s global operations across different sectors fit together and support one another. The graphic represents a complex, multinational organization in one double-page spread with clear labels, and, like Holcim, 3D representations of industrial assets and vehicles.

5. Create a report landing page on your website

Hollis & Bean conducted a wider benchmark of 140 CAC 40 and FTSE 100 companies to see how they shared their 2023 annual reports.

Almost all companies (99%) uploaded a PDF of the report to their websites as a downloadable file. Around a quarter of companies (26%) also created interactive pages on their corporate websites: a dwindling proportion (11%) created a dedicated microsite for their annual reports.

This trend is markedly different from five years ago, when companies were keen to offer annual report readers an innovative, interactive experience, and microsites were on the increase. Yet the pitfalls of microsites are clear. First, return on investment: for the majority of B2B companies, the number of visitors to the online annual report doesn’t warrant an entirely new website. Second, microsites can be hard for the user to find. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, creating a dedicated microsite can rob the corporate site of potential visitors.

This is why our longstanding conviction at Hollis & Bean is that the optimum solution is an interactive webpage on the corporate website that provides a snapshot of content and invites readers to download the PDF. A long-scroll annual report page boosts traffic to your company’s website and can enhance SEO, improving your position on search engine results pages. It is also straightforward to integrate links to other sections of your site so that users can easily navigate to the information that interests them.

26%

create a report landing page on their corporate website

11%

create a dedicated microsite

Best practice: GSK

GSK created an effective webpage for its 2023 annual report that features shortened versions of texts in the PDF of the report. The page engages users with interactive tiles, scrollbars and links to other sections of the website. It makes the report digestible and highlights the information GSK deems most important, reinforcing its business priorities and corporate narrative to a wide, online audience.

Build these best practices into your 2024 integrated annual report

 Save yourself time and resources down the road by embracing these insights from the beginning of the annual report process. Spend time with your team deciding how to integrate sustainability, humanize data, personalize the CEO statement, create impactful visuals and publish your report for maximum impact.

 Wondering where to begin? Hollis & Bean can support you at every step, from strategic consulting and project planning to editing and design. Our team has been creating clear and transparent reports for Europe’s leading asset managers and listed companies for the past decade. In 2024, we worked with eight clients across different sectors to prepare their annual, sustainability and DE&I reports.

Get in touch today to discuss your reporting requirements in 2025.

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