How organizations are addressing the 'G' in ESG – striking the balance of maximizing long-term growth and value while safeguarding the interests of all stakeholders
Note: In the aftermath of last week’s Presidential election, we at Sustainable Brands were struck by the parallels to a recent, similarly polarizing political situation abroad with an equally shocking result – the UK’s Brexit referendum – and how Andy Last’s astute observations at the time, about the breakdowns in communication that led just over half of Brits to vote to leave the EU, seem applicable to us here in the States now. We share it with you below – enjoy.
“Business Humanizer?” the client read out loud from my business card. “And what does a Business Humanizer do?” she asked, light-heartedly. It always triggers a question. What does business humanizing have to do with brands, organizations and more meaningful growth? Teams and organizations more often apply business sense to humans, rather than applying human sense to business. And yet, human sense and empathy are essential drivers for both business results and positive societal impact by brands and companies. Humanizing business means putting people and our role in society at the heart of our brands and cherishing this behaviour as an engine for growth. Can you create the difference in your organization?
Three-quarters (76 percent) of Millennials consider a company’s social and environmental commitments when deciding where to work and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) won’t take a job if a potential employer doesn’t have strong corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices, according to the 2016 Cone Communications Millennial Employee Engagement Study. The study reveals that meaningful engagement around CSR is a business – and bottom line – imperative, impacting a company’s ability to appeal to, retain and inspire Millennial talent (that’s a business case if we ever heard one).
Oslo, Norway has a much more ambitious plan than most when it comes to cutting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The city plans to cut its GHG emissions in half compared to 1990 levels, in only four years – faster than any city or country has made changes in the past, according to Fast CoExist. At the same time, if we want to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, it’s the pace we need.
The host of food and drink company members of the United Kingdom’s (UK’s) Food and Drink Federation (FDF) have developed a series of new sustainability commitments. The newly-released “Ambition 2025” document builds on the group’s previous “Five-Fold Environmental Ambition” and includes goals related to climate change, food waste, packaging, water, transport, supply chains and natural capital, as well as case studies highlighting some of their members’ best practices.
Marking the 25th anniversary of its industry-changing supplier code of conduct, called Terms of Engagement, Levi Strauss & Co. (LS&Co.) announced a new commitment to expand the company’s pioneering Worker Wellbeing initiative – both within and outside the company. By 2025, the company aims to:
Business leaders who embrace ‘purpose beyond profit’ can transform the fortunes of their organisations, but they can’t do it alone. A company’s purpose only truly comes to life if all employees are both inspired and equipped to put purpose into action. This means that purposeful leaders need to have a firm grasp on how purpose flows and moves within an organisation: how it inspires and enrols people, how it must be mapped and translated across different parts of the business, how it encounters resistance and how it unlocks new approaches to problem-solving. Above all, business leaders must understand that truly effective purpose serves as an invitation to co-create. What does this mean in practice? Here are five key steps to help you learn how to go with the flow:
It’s time to look beyond sustainability. As a term, it just isn’t enough anymore. Sustainability orients us to a zero sum equation, trying to maintain the status quo. But what exactly are we trying to sustain? What kind of value does that create – for ourselves, for our clients, or for our communities?
“What keeps you up at night?” Solitaire Townsend, co-founder of Futerra, asked this question to 50 sustainability leaders from around the globe on the third and final day of SB ’16 Copenhagen. The core issues most people responded with were inequality, climate change, recession, refugees, biodiversity loss. “It’s the ‘parade of horribles’ that makes sleep tough at times,” said one survey responder. The theme that came out of the expressed fears was division on multiple fronts: Division of opinions, incomes, outlooks.
“What comes to mind when you think of millennials in the workplace?” Bethan Harris, strategist and collaborator at Collectively and the League of Intrapreneurs (LI), asked during her Tuesday afternoon session at SB’16 Copenhagen.
Have you ever been thankful the cashier didn’t ask if you want a receipt, because you’re tired of the paper piling up? You do your best to recycle receipts, but there’re still those that slip through the cracks into the trash. Have you ever wondered why we still have paper receipts in a digital world? Your annoyance is well-placed. According to mobile payments juggernaut Square, these little paper slips inflict the following damage on the environment per year:
“Our organization is totally supportive of sustainability as long as nothing else comes up or it doesn’t interfere with something the Executive wants to do!” Hands up if you have heard this before. Many organizations find that after the long process of building and adopting a sustainability policy or strategy, they stall. Sure, implementing and embedding sustainability into the business and day-to-day operational decisions is hard work, but that’s not the only thing holding up changes. Often, the environmental management or sustainability plan becomes siloed within the organization, resulting in delays and disorganization. As well, functional leaders don’t always understand the plan’s relevance to their area.
In this volatile time of unceasing change, the opening night plenary presentations at SB’16 Copenhagen explored the characteristics an organisation needs to not just be resilient, but be ‘fit’ for the future. They unravelled the challenges and successes of their journeys through activating the purpose that moved them to more sustainable, future-fit organisations.
What is the most effective way to lead change? Some would argue for a top-down approach focused on execution, while others believe in an intrinsic, sense-and-respond style. For Leith Sharp, director of executive education at Harvard University’s Center for Health, the answer is that organizations need both a command control operating system and adaptive sensing capability to lead transformation in the 21st century. “The challenge for adaptive organizing champions is to learn both languages,” said Sharp. “A healthy command control is putting purpose first earnestly so the whole system can survive.”
In 2011, Target set a goal for its entire fresh and frozen seafood assortment to be sustainable, traceable, or in a time-bound improvement process by the end of 2015. Through a partnership with consultancy FishWise, the retailer met the goal for 100% of its owned-brand seafood products, and 97% of its full seafood assortment. The remaining products are expected to achieve full compliance by the end of this year.
A new forecast by DNV GL concludes that while progress will be made towards many of the United Nations’ (UN’s) 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals), there is a very real risk that they will not be met by 2030. The report predicts that action will not be fast nor fair enough, and will come at an unacceptable environmental cost — but reminds us that there is still time to reset the course of our “Spaceship Earth.”
On Black Friday of 2011, Patagonia released a now-famous New York Times advertisement with a picture of a jacket and a simple plea: “Don’t buy this jacket.” The response, ironically, was a surge in sales. Some analysts deemed the whole thing a cheap trick. But the underlying message was clear.
Your company’s sustainability commitments help attract the best and the brightest, reduce turnover and enhance productivity. That’s the substance of consistent and compelling research that shows the power of embedding sustainability into corporate culture and its relationship to the bottom line. HR leaders can use this knowledge to create powerful recruitment, engagement and retention strategies.
California is about to face its biggest emissions reductions challenges yet, under new legislation signed late last week by Governor Jerry Brown. With a population of 38 million and growing, and a GDP of almost $2.5 trillion, California is the sixth-largest economy in the world – and now has one of the most ambitious mandates against climate change.
It’s that time of year again: S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) and Sustainability Investing specialist RobecoSAM have announced the results of the annual Dow Jones Sustainability Indices (DJSI) review.