Create your annual CEO report

The process of writing your CEO annual report starts way in advance before you begin actually drafting the report. This is because with so much going on in the business, the reality is, you should already be continuously keeping track of your organisation’s metrics and results throughout the year, and then using the annual report as an opportunity to include all this information in a final message.

So, because it will soon be time to start preparing your CEO annual report, let’s take a closer look at all the components it should include.

Before we get to the practicals of how to actually construct a CEO annual report, let’s get to the bottom of the goals of the CEO’s annual report, the forms it can take and what characterises a good report. A CEO annual report is a comprehensive document that provides an update of an organisation’s performance over the previous year.

This report typically covers all the activities that the company engaged in throughout the year, as well as the results that these activities generated. Because of all the important information it contains that can help guide the company’s next steps, a CEO annual report is the ultimate supporting document for board meetings. It lays out the general business context from which the reader can drill into more specific information for key decisions. Therefore, the primary purpose of a CEO annual report is to provide context for board meetings whilst the agenda and specific supporting papers supply the details to drive decisions.

More specifically, a CEO annual report typically has the following goals:

• Share the decision maker’s position regarding the company’s growth
• Highlight the company’s key achievements
• Introduce the top-performing employees to the stakeholders
• Provide information on the company’s financial situation
• Cover management’s plans for the upcoming year

Now that you understand the purposes of a CEO report, let’s dive deeper into how it can actually help you and your company. Download our free guide here.