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Empowering Leadership: Steps to Creating a More Sustainable Organisation

As a sustainability professional or champion, your goal is to inspire your colleagues and leaders to cultivate a sustainable organisation that can thrive in the long run.

Through minimising your business's environmental footprint and embracing sustainability practices, you can safeguard natural resources, mitigate risks, cut costs associated with inadequate environmental management, and enhance your reputation with customers, investors, and other stakeholders. By adopting these measures, your organisation can pave the way for a prosperous and responsible future. 

The importance of sustainable leadership’ article by Forbes reported on McKinsey & Co.'s research, which highlights the substantial value creation that can arise from focusing on ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) factors. This emphasis can positively impact critical business aspects, including top-line growth, cost reductions, regulatory and legal compliance, productivity, and investment and asset optimisation. 

However, achieving sustainable operations goes beyond merely implementing new policies and programs. To achieve lasting change, you need the wholehearted buy-in of your leadership team.

Here are some valuable sustainability tools to engage your leadership team:

Start with a diagnosis:

To gain your leadership team's support for your sustainability plans, it is crucial to first assess their current levels of engagement and identify any obstacles hindering full adoption of sustainability principles. Conducting surveys, interviews, or focus groups with targeted questions about their understanding and commitment can provide valuable insights. The objective is to pinpoint specific behaviours, beliefs, and assumptions that may act as barriers or discourage active participation.

Despite the numerous benefits of sustainability, certain barriers can impede leadership teams from fully integrating sustainability into the organisational strategy. By understanding and addressing these barriers, you can foster a more receptive environment and ensure that sustainability becomes an integral part of your organisation's vision and operations. 

Identified common barriers include:

1. Lack of Understanding: Leaders may not fully understand the benefits of sustainability or the impact that their actions have on the environment.
2. Short-Term Thinking: Leaders may be focused on short-term profits and don’t see the long-term benefits of sustainability.
3. Lack of Resources: Companies may not have the resources to invest in sustainable practices or may not see the immediate benefits of doing so.
4. Lack of motivation – Leaders may not buy in to sustainability because it is not tied to performance indicators.
5. Lack of experience – The leadership may lack the experience and confidence necessary to act as champions of sustainable practices.

Make it personal

Personalising the concept is crucial to genuinely engage your leadership team in sustainability. It involves assisting them in understanding the direct and indirect environmental impacts of both their individual actions and their areas of responsibility within the organisation. This understanding empowers them to drive meaningful and positive change within the organisation and potentially their personal lives. One effective approach is to invite sustainability experts to address your leadership team or conduct workshops such as IEMA's half-day workshop Leading with Environmental Sustainability. These opportunities allow them to gain valuable insights and help them to think about how they can embed sustainability strategy and initiatives within the organisation. Additionally, encouraging leaders to take individual steps to reduce their environmental footprint can further reinforce their commitment to the cause. By making sustainability personal, you can foster genuine involvement and enthusiasm among your leadership team.

Provide relevant data and information 

One of the first steps in your organisation’s sustainability journey should be to set baseline measurements on its current impacts on the environment. To get your leadership team engaged in sustainability, it is important to provide them with relevant data and information about the impact that their actions have. This can include information about the amount of waste that the company produces, the energy that is used, and measuring its carbon footprint through partnerships with organisations such as The Carbon Trust. Providing this information can help to make the case for the need to adopt more sustainable practices.

Create a framework

To foster engagement from your leadership team regarding sustainability, you can establish a supportive framework that encourages their active involvement. This framework should seamlessly integrate sustainability principles into your company's policies, procedures, and strategic planning. Additionally, it should encompass clear and concise documentation of procedures and provide a compelling explanation of why sustainability is an essential business imperative. By creating such a comprehensive framework, you lay the foundation for your leadership team to embrace sustainability as an integral part of your organisation's values and objectives.

Set targets for improvement

Establishing targets for improvement is a vital step in the process. Once you have gathered data, established frameworks, and assessed your leadership team's engagement level, it's time to set sustainability targets. These targets should be tailored to your company's unique characteristics and adhere to the SMART criteria (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound).

Having well-defined and measurable targets will enable you and your organisation to track progress effectively and gauge success. These targets will serve as Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that guide you in monitoring your journey and identifying areas where adjustments are needed to stay on course towards achieving your objectives.

Furthermore, the United Nations Global Compact is a non-binding initiative encouraging businesses and firms worldwide to embrace sustainable and socially responsible policies while also reporting on their implementation progress. Engaging with this pact can be a valuable step in aligning your organisation with global sustainability goals.

Foster a culture of sustainability

Achieving sustainability is a journey that demands a focus on both long-term objectives and short-term actions. To cultivate a sustainable culture, it is essential to motivate employees to incorporate sustainability practices into their daily operations. This may involve fostering green teams, providing staff training, and incentivising those who display sustainable behaviour. Through IEMA's Corporate Partnerships program, organisations like DHL and CBRE receive support in training and educating their staff, enhancing their understanding and skills in sustainability. This, in turn, facilitates a transformative shift towards a more sustainable mindset within the organisational culture.

Communicate the benefits

To engage your leadership team in sustainability, it is crucial to communicate the benefits effectively. Catherine Cote from The Harvard Business School outlines 8 key advantages of sustainability for businesses in her article Making the Business Case for Sustainability (hbs.edu) These benefits encompass employee retention and attraction, cost savings, risk reduction, fostering innovation, exploring new business opportunities, and positive impacts on the environment. By showcasing how environmental protection can lead to financial gains, your leadership team is more likely to be actively invested in sustainability initiatives. 

Celebrate sustainability success

Lastly, it holds significant importance to celebrate your organisations sustainability accomplishments. This involves recognising the attained benefits, improvements in staff engagement and morale, and favourable customer perceptions. By celebrating these successes, you contribute to an environment where sustainability is viewed as a valuable and worthwhile investment. Such recognition fosters continued commitment and enthusiasm for sustainable practices within your organisation.

Create a sustainability improvement or action plan

To effectively consolidate efforts towards sustainability, collaboration with leaders is vital in creating a sustainability improvement plan. A sustainability implementation plan outlines an organisation's objectives, goals, and specific actions to integrate sustainability principles into its operations and practices. The plan emphasises environmental, social, and governance (ESG) priorities while laying out measurable targets and initiatives to achieve them.

Implementing a sustainability action plan holds numerous benefits for organisations:

• Corporate Responsibility: A sustainability action plan serves as a testament to a company's commitment to responsible business practices and ethical decision-making, showcasing their concern for their impact on the environment and society.
• Long-Term Success: Integrating sustainability into business operations strengthens long-term competitiveness and resilience, enabling the company to adapt to evolving market demands and regulations.
• Risk Mitigation: Proactively addressing sustainability issues reduces risks related to environmental liabilities, reputational damage, and legal and regulatory compliance.
• Attracting Talent and Customers: Demonstrating a dedication to sustainability and social responsibility helps attract and retain both employees and customers who align with the company's values.
• Cost Savings: Sustainable practices lead to more efficient resource utilisation, resulting in reduced operating costs and improved bottom-line performance.
• Innovation and Opportunity: Sustainability challenges present opportunities for innovation, driving product and process improvements that can open up new markets and revenue streams.
• Investor Confidence: Increasingly, investors consider ESG performance in their decision-making. A well-defined sustainability action plan can attract socially responsible investors.
• Supply Chain Resilience: Integrating sustainability into the supply chain enhances resilience, ensuring a stable and sustainable supply of materials and resources.
• Regulatory Compliance: Addressing sustainability requirements proactively enables organisations to stay ahead of evolving regulations and avoid potential penalties.
• Contributing to a Sustainable Future: By implementing sustainable practices, leaders contribute to collective efforts in building a more sustainable and resilient future for society and the planet.

Achieving sustainable long-term Success

Ultimately, getting your leadership team engaged in sustainability is a multi-step process. By successfully involving your leadership team, you increase the likelihood of achieving long-term success and driving progress towards a more sustainable future. 

Drawing inspiration from successful examples of leadership engagement and sustainable practices in various organisations is invaluable. You can participate in Institutes, networks, associations, or platforms that encourage sustainability learning and knowledge exchange, such as the UN Global Compact, the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), or with us at IEMA.  

Additionally, seeking mentorship, partnership, or recognition from sustainability leaders, experts, change makers, or awards programs can further enrich your journey towards a sustainable future.

By tapping into these resources, you can gather insights and guidance that will strengthen your own organisation’s sustainability strategy and initiatives.

Jo Watson, Head of Corporate Partnerships, IEMA. 

The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment is the global professional body for over 20,000 individuals and 300 organisations working, studying or interested in the environment and sustainability.