The potential of purpose:
How sustainability can help your organization
Delivering real change begins with us as individuals. Working alongside our partners, The IN Group is focused on actively doing good through our four committees, which focus on DEI, Environment, Wellbeing and Engagement and our Charity partnerships.
Joanna Heneker is the founder of sust. consulting, a sustainability consultancy that helps businesses become more sustainable and achieve a greater sense of purpose.
Work takes up a huge proportion of our adult lives, so it’s worth giving some thought to the impact it has on you, your community and the world in which we live. Why do you go to work every day? What motivates you as an individual? What’s the purpose of your workplace?
If you’re lucky, you’ll have answers to these questions beyond paying the bills, which can help you develop your career path and goals and even lead to developing a sustainability plan for you and your company.
Let’s start by understanding the link between purpose and the planet. Purpose is a constant that gives meaning to everything we do. It answers the question of why an organization exists and the ethics intrinsic to it. Ethics are about doing things properly and these days properly include the impact of business on people and the planet.
I believe that all businesses are set up to solve a problem or make something better, with profits to follow (hopefully!). If a business has a clear purpose, it inspires trust. Trust is a huge currency in the business world. When making decisions, businesses need to be sure that what they are doing fits their purpose, is trustworthy and doesn’t lead to unexpected negative consequences.
If the answer is no, start by looking at the vision and mission statements. If you don’t believe they exist, think about who the organization is trying to help and the problem it’s trying to solve.
If you don’t know where to start, here are some questions you could ask yourself:
Why was my organization set up?
Who are we trying to help?
What does it care about?
Then consider how your role fits into those answers:
Why am I good at what I do?
What are my values?
How do my values fit with those of the organization?
By now, you should have a good idea of what your business purpose is (beyond making a few bucks), so you can start linking it to people and the planet.
A great tool to get you in the right frame of mind is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs). The UN created this set of universal global goals in 2015 to meet the urgent environmental, political and economic challenges facing our world. There are 17 of them, covering all sorts of issues, including poverty, health, climate action and equality.
Pick a couple that resonate and fit with your business purpose and think about where you have the biggest opportunity to contribute to society and the planet (you could also do this at home with your family). When you look at all the UNSDGs, I can pretty much guarantee that at least one will jump out as a match to your organization’s purpose.
No Poverty (goal 1) – work with suppliers to ensure they are paying a fair wage.
Responsible Consumption and Production (Goal 12) – reduce the amount of waste from fashion and encourage people to make their clothes last longer.
Once you’ve identified those goals, it’s time to get agreement that they’re the right fit for your organization.
Having specific goals that align to purpose lead to your sustainability strategy. They help with scope management and guide decision-making to make your organization as effective as possible.
For example, if you work for a financial business, you might focus on:
Quality Education and Reduced Inequalities – by dedicating a certain amount of time for staff to go into schools to talk to pupils about managing money. This will fit with the skills of your people and be a big value add for your community. It will demonstrate that your organization’s purpose goes beyond profit and genuinely cares.
It’s a simple example, but it shows how a clear sustainability focus helps to identify actions that support what you stand for. Decision-making is a big part of running a business, so having well-defined reasons for why you do one thing over another is key.
Identifying your Sustainable Development Goals can also help you innovate and try new things, not just to help your community and the planet but also to grow your business or save money. If you run a catering business and you champion Zero Hunger, it may lead you to create your menu in a different way or assess how much food is left on plates, reducing food waste and potentially increasing your profit margin!
More and more people are passionate about our planet, so if your business shows it cares and is doing something to make a difference, you’ll likely attract and retain people who share similar values and want to work for a business like yours. Not only does this help your organization thrive, but it’s also a great story to tell staff, clients and prospective customers.
The big question is, how do you incorporate this into how you do things? The key is green skills – role-specific environmental competencies. Most people only think of this in terms of environmental roles. Still, I believe that ALL jobs, regardless of sector or department, will require a minimum level of sustainability knowledge – even if that role doesn’t seem to have anything to do with the environment.
Finance manager? The investment appraisal process will consider a project’s impact on the planet. Procurement manager? Teams will be assessing the green credentials of suppliers. HR manager? You’ll need to understand sustainability to enable effective recruitment. Marketing? You’ll need enough knowledge to ensure that your company doesn’t greenwash.
And it goes on. Every role will need clear green skills within it, to fit with a company’s purpose and sustainability strategy.
So, understand your purpose, link that to sustainability and then build the skills you need to achieve your goals into ALL roles across your business. Make sustainability part of every aspect of your organization, including the performance review and recruitment processes – then you’ll be building a business to last, with a positive impact on people and the planet; what better purpose is there?
