This essay is about how organizations reveal their employees in the annual report. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which organizations reveals their employees in the annual report, and the purpose has three questions: How do the organizations present their employees in the annual report? What do they choose to report? What motives lies behind?
The problem today is that organizations can´t account the employees as assets, they can only be accounted as an expense in the income statement. This can lead to that stakeholders can´t convey an organization's "true" value.
With a combination study, we examined how organizations certified by Investors in People presents the employees in their annual reports. In the framework, we have, among other things dealt with personnel mandatory disclosure in the Annual Account Act, the difference between private- and public sectors accounting. We have also used communication theory, institutional theory and legitimacy theory in an attempt to describe our problem, and also the latest research in the field.
Our results shows that some organizations choose to report only the personnel mandatory disclosures required by law, while others reported beyond the obligatory, which is called voluntary disclosure. Those organizations that choose to volunteer disclosure their employees use features as skill development, health and sickness absence. In the public sector, it is also reported on equality and influences by the employees. The motives behind why the public sector uses voluntary disclosure about their employees is because they don´t only want to show them as an expense. In the private sector organizations uses voluntary disclosure about their employees if they benefit from providing that information to their stakeholders.