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co/blog/five-steps-to-kickstart-your-business-sustainability-
journey
A materiality assessment will not only help you make sure your sustainability
efforts accurately reduce your impact and return value, it will also provide
insight into business risks and opportunities, and help build a business case
for senior executives, CXOs, and investors for sustainability.
Now that you understand your company’s material impacts, risks, and
opportunities, the next step will be to make sure the correct people are
responsible and accountable for the right goals. For example, who better
than your HR department to be responsible for ensuring that the organization
reaches its racial diversity targets?
After responsibilities are delegated to the right person in the
organization, ensure that a system is in place for following up on a
regular basis — and trust us, that one yearly meeting with year-old data to
‘address sustainability issues’ is not enough.
Hold monthly or even weekly meetings, or have the accountable people
prepare an update report. The more frequently targets are being followed-up
on, the more closely progress can be monitored: following the right data
insights, the more changes can be made to have problems addressed or
opportunities leveraged.
It is also important to make sure someone in the organization is responsible
for data management: making sure data is handled responsibly and ethically
and, at the root of it, being collected frequently and accurately.
And about budget: has an appropriate budget been assigned to actually
create the change you're after? If not, ensure that buy-in and budget from top
management.
Let’s start off your target-setting with some advice from the UN Global
Compact: set ambitious goals even if you’re not quite sure how to go about
them just yet. With ambitious goals come innovation, investments, positive
engagement, and ultimately performance — don’t just do what is ‘achievable’,
be a gamechanger (and reap the benefits of the long game).
Not quite there yet? Setting some targets based on low hanging fruits is a
good way to get the ball rolling too. Remember that target-setting should be
aligned with materiality: based on your materiality assessment, which areas
are more important or more urgent to create positive change for?
Need more guidance? Looking at benchmarks can be another helpful way to
go about setting targets. Look out for industry, national, and even global
associations that provide benchmarks to understanding: Where are we now
compared to others in the industry? What are others in the industry doing?
What do we want to achieve, and how can we achieve it?
For example, Livsmedelsföretagen , an organization that supports companies
in the food industry in Sweden, invites its member companies to commit to its
sustainability manifesto based on industry and national sustainability
goals. Fossilfritt Sverige is another similar initiative, which works towards
identifying key areas that need to be addressed in order to accelerate change
on a national level, with the goal of making Sweden the first fossil-free nation
in the world.
With the help of these benchmarks, set sustainability targets that are SMART:
Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Time-bound. One
sustainability target that many companies are scrambling to work towards
right now (and rightly so) is reducing their carbon emissions.
Find out where and how decisions are being made at your organization and
get sustainability into these processes!
From ensuring that sustainability is on the agenda for every management
team meeting to including sustainability criteria in innovation
processes, adding sustainability criterion to decision-making processes
is a simple but effective way of incorporating sustainability into both
everyday operations as well as big decisions. For example, are the new
innovations more energy-intensive to produce than your current product?
Does the new supplier have the appropriate certifications?
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: you can’t improve what you can’t
measure. Measuring and tracking is the only way to follow up on your time-
bound goals and to understand your progress. And how often should you
measure and track? Well, we’ve established that the typical once-a-year is
simply not enough. Measurements should be taken regularly, and goals
should be tracked and reviewed quarterly, monthly, or even weekly. Tracking
your impact on a higher frequency allows you to act quickly, based on insights
gleaned from recent data.
Moreover, measuring and tracking your progress will allow you to quantify the
positive effects of your sustainability efforts in a way that is comparable to
other business investments, helping you strengthen your business case for
future sustainability investments.
And there you go, the 5 steps you can take to kickstart your business’ sustainability journey!
Now what are you waiting for? A sustainable business doesn’t build itself - get
to work and good luck!
Feeling overwhelmed? Don’t forget that you can work smarter to make a
difference by investing in a sustainability management platform that can help
automate the process in order to provide timely insights that are data-driven
and actionable.
Here at SustainLab we believe in accelerating change for a better business
and a better planet. Contact us today to find out how our platform can help
you accelerate your sustainability journey and provide you with the help you
need to make real impact and value.
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