Challenges to overcome
There is a lack of enthusiasm among staff for driving forward the sustainability agenda.
Leadership is crucial to ensuring the buy-in of staff. There can be a perception that sustainability is a ‘fad’ that will pass when the next fashionable issue comes along. Creating a board-level sustainability champion to demonstrate the organisation’s ongoing commitment can help to counter this impression. The NHS Good Corporate Citizenship Toolkit includes a guide on managing organisational change that emphasises the importance of senior commitment to sustainability and a clear, shared vision alongside capacity for change and action in successfully embedding sustainability into an organisation. The Kent County Council Climate Change Project demonstrates the importance placed on political and managerial leadership and communications in embedding sustainability.
Staff in functions outside those traditionally associated with sustainability do not think that sustainability is relevant to their job.
It is important that all staff recognise that they have a contribution to make towards implementing the organisation’s sustainability strategy and meeting targets.
To see how communications networks can be used to help staff to understand what their contribution should be, see our Key Considerations page.
One effective way to emphasise the relevance of sustainability is to build sustainability objectives into staff workplans – making sustainability an integral part of the appraisal process can really help to focus minds.
There is a lack of senior-level commitment to sustainability.
Staff look to senior executives to set the cultural tone of the organisation. The organisations that are most successful in embedding sustainability are those with leaders who have a clear sustainability vision. Conversely, it can be difficult for committed middle managers to achieve sustainable outcomes in the face of board-level resistance.
The NHS Good Corporate Citizenship Toolkit includes a guide entitled 'Influencing Senior Management – Getting It Wrong', which guides the user through potential pitfalls to avoid when convincing senior management of the importance of sustainability, and outlines a method for success.
Even where strong senior-level commitment to sustainability exist, challenges may still arise. Middle managers may be too busy to implement sustainability initiatives or may lack the incentives to do so. This is often the case where there is little integration of the organisation's corporate and sustainability strategies, or where there is no accountability for implementation. These issues are explored further in the Establishing governance & accountability section of the website.
Are there challenges in this area we haven’t discussed? If so, please tell us about them.
Do you have another example of how these challenges can be overcome? If so, please submit a case study.