Key considerations
The issues and drivers for the public and private sector might differ but there are so many common themes that apply equally to each in considering the need to take a strategic approach.
- What does sustainable development mean to your organisation?
- How important is being sustainable to your organisation?
- What is your long term view of sustainable development?
- What are the pressures and expectations around sustainability that could affect your organisation?
- Do you have a burning platform?
- What are the risks and benefits of embedding sustainability in your organisation?
1. What does sustainable development mean to your organisation?
Sustainable development is a complex concept and for many people and organisations. So it is well worth spending some time internally to reach some sort of common understanding about how the organisation interprets sustainable development. The Sustainable Development Commission has a section on its website that relates to understanding SD. Elsewhere, the Forum for the Future also has a section on tools for understanding SD.
2. How important is being sustainable to your organisation?
Be honest with yourself - do you want to set the benchmark in your sector or are you concerned to be legally compliant and avoid any unnecessary bad press? How does sustainability fit in to your organisational priorities and how might it differentiate you in the market place or public perception?
What are your competitors doing? What about your suppliers? For manufacturers or retailors, how can your organisation work with others in your supply chain, to help them understand how these issues impact on the delivery of your products or services. This can help to drive action in the organisation to manage and reduce these impacts.
This is not a discussion that can take place in private it needs to be aired among employees, not least as it could directly affect future recruitment and retention. Many organisations that contributed to this project, such as the Disability and Carers Service, cited internal pressure from staff as an important issue in encouraging them to embrace sustainable development.
3. What is your long term view of sustainable development?
A rigorous approach to sustainability cannot be transient. But you need to think about the extent to which sustainability is an issue that is current and topical but relatively unexplored for you and others in your sector, or is it something that has been and will remain important over many years? It is important to establish early on the ways in which key sustainable development issues are material and relevant to your organisation, and the extent to which they are fixed and enduring or transient. Also how does that view differ throughout the various different parts of your organisation, for example, between the corporate centre and the shop floor?
To clarify this it may be useful to map issues on to a matrix that enables issues to be rated on their impact to society or the environment and their potential impact on the organisation. These pressures can arise from government, the media, pressure groups, employees, investors and financial considerations.
Mapping sustainability issues onto a matrix will also help you to determine which issues are the most important to your organisation and therefore which must be addressed first. Guidance on this is given under Accountability’s ‘Five part materiality test’.
5. Do you have a burning platform?
It is inevitable that regulatory infringements and the associated censure, including through adverse media coverage, can have a galvanising effect in determining whether an organisation takes a more strategic approach to sustainable development. But to be really compelling and coherent, the strategic approach itself has to be based on more than reasons of reputation management.
6. What are the risks and benefits of embedding sustainability in your organisation?
The benefits of embedding sustainability into your organisation may include several aspects.
- Social Benefits e.g. staff wellbeing
- Environmental Benefits e.g. through reduced resource consumption such as energy and water use
- Operational Benefits e.g. reduced operational costs and technological innovation.
Generally the benefits of embedding sustainability are likely to follow a set of themes consistent with PESTEL analysis, discussed above.
The risks of failing to embed sustainability into your organisation are likely to be the converse of the benefits described above. These may include issues such as competitive disadvantage, poor reputation and brand image, resource inefficiency and related depletion, failure to comply with legislation, and many more besides.
Are there any key considerations that we have not included? If so, please let us know.