Let’s think about this natural reaction some people may have when dealing with IR. There are two different barriers which prevent people from embracing IR: the hard barriers and the soft ones.
The HARD barriers
They are connected with the lack of knowledge of the IR framework (e.g. IR guiding principles or content elements) and its applications within the organisation.
The solution?
Easy: reading just a few pages of the IR framework will help them to understand that communicating their company’s value creation story triggers massive benefits in terms of business impacts on the investors, clients and prospects without considering the increase of the employees engagement. Furthermore, real-life insights on the application and the relatedbenefits of IR are easily available by joining the IR business network the international initiative that gathers professionals that are willing to share their respective IR experiences.
The SOFT barriers
They are the most critical ones: it’s a sort of mental silos approach which is freezing people to take action even if the benefits are crystal clear to them. It’s all about fearing the change because we have always done the annual report in this way. Why change it?’.
The solution?
Not so easy: it’s a personal attitude issue.
Some people (the promoters) are naturally more curious than others and therefore ready to live the integrated thinking philosophy and to spread globally the IR gospel.
Others (the followers) need to ‘touch’ in practice that even the annual report may become a readable document for a lot of people and not only for just a few specialists like today.
Then there are the IR detractors. It is crucial that there is continuous interaction with IR detractors as they can help developing new ideas on how to improve IR and at the same time it is possible to try understanding any concerns which still prevent them from applying the IR Framework. The more the IR joiners the better for the market as a whole!
Finally, when people realize the integrated thinking is improving their professional and personal life, then they will embrace the IR journey and all the barriers will fade away.
By Massimo Romano, from: http://www.tagetik.com/blog/authors/massimo-romano/2015-06-integrated-reporting-ir#.VZAURxtVhBc