Triple Bottom Line: People, Planet and Profit

Our paper ‘17 questions to ask a prospective accountant’ (which you can download from this website) mentions the Triple Bottom Line. It suggests that you should ask any accountant you are looking to work with what they know about this.

Someone recently asked me to explain what the Triple Bottom Line is. Basically, it means measuring the performance of an organisation in terms of the three Ps:

• People – the social impact
• Planet – the ecological impact
• Profit – the economic impact (on the wider community, not just the organisation)

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_bottom_line for more.

How long will it be before businesses need to report on all three areas, I wonder, and will the accountancy profession be in people and planet areas? I hope we at K&H are.