Annual reports

By Irene Wong

Irene Wong is Publishing Manager at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

Irene has been involved with producing annual reports for several Commonwealth Government agencies. The views in this article are Irene's and are not necessarily those of her employer or of the law.

Have you thought of becoming a specialist in annual report projects? In a year, this work isn’t generally available for 12 months but some companies do have financial years that end at times other than June so some work is available throughout the year.

In many respects managing and/or writing an annual report (AR) calls on the same skills and experience that other technical communications projects demand. However there are also some aspects of ARs that differ from other technical communications projects.

This article highlights some unique aspects of AR publishing and offers a few tips. The structure of this article broadly follows the information development planning template in JoAnn Hackos' Information Development of 2007. It focuses on planning ARs for companies listed on the stock exchange, government agencies, and to a lesser extent organisations regulated under legislation such as some not-for-profit (nfp) bodies.

Read Irene's observations of what is required to produce fit-for-purpose annual reports.