STMicroelectronics : Checking performance

Web-specific design opens up an annual report.

The Site

STMicroelectronics, a Switzerland-based semiconductor developer, works the medium well to unlock an annual report.

ST Microelectronics (ST) includes a ‘Check Our Performance’ dropdown in the left navigation of its online annual CR (corporate responsibility) Report. Six options (Company, Economic, Social, Environmental, Product Responsibility, Supply Chain) allow quick access to the index pages of major sections of the report. The left menu also carries standing links to a glossary and an Indicator Index, which maps the report against the guidelines of the GRI (Global Reporting Initiative) and the principles of the UN Global Compact. Users can switch between the two indexes, while tabs and hyperlinking allow movement to passages in the report related to individual criteria.

Non-data pages have one or two sets of links in the right-hand column: In This Report and Related Topics, the latter relating to material from outside the current report. Their composition is tailored to page content.

The Takeaway

ST’s CR Report positively invites people to explore the company’s performance and practices through a combination of innovation and exploitation of standard navigational features. While the latter – such as the use of related links – might seem old hat, it is used surprisingly little in online reports, presumably because most still have their origins in print format rather than being designed from the outset as web publications. So, in the context of online reporting, this adds a tangible sense that the company is encouraging of examination.

That sense is reinforced by more novel features such as Check Our Performance – hard to get much more inviting than that – and the ubiquity of the glossary and Indicator Index, which again is not unique but has been designed to exploit the medium to aid disclosure.

First published on 11 June, 2009