Sustainability strategies and communication: Looking back is not enough…
March 31, 2014
Rupali Patni looks at the state of sustainability reporting in 2014, and argues that companies often still have too little ambition when it comes to talking about the future.
It’s reporting season – and a new slew of CSR and sustainability reports hit our inboxes. However I am still surprised at how many companies continue to focus solely on their performance in the past year, without looking at the wider context in which they operate and the future sustainability issues pushing at their door.
From the early days of reporting, when companies felt the need to provide an account to society and stakeholders of how they were managing key issues of concern, the tendency for companies has been to look back.
However, as the wider sustainability context in which companies operate becomes more complex and challenging, it becomes more imperative for companies to frame their sustainability activity around a clear vision, a sense of direction of travel and an understanding of the wider sustainability and business context they are operating in.
Sustainability is all about the future
Sustainable development – the end goal, the utopia we all seek – is all about the future. As the classic Bruntland definition states, we should be living in a way today that doesn’t jeopardise future generations’ ability to sustain themselves on this planet of limited resources.
Acting on sustainability issues today is all about making an impact for tomorrow.
On social issues, too, the Millennium Development Goals first set out some ambitious targets to create consensus, momentum and focus for the big development challenges facing the world. And now the great and the good of the development field are debating what will follow. Everyone is clear that we need a strong set of ‘Post 2015’ commitments to keep us focused on the right issues going forward.
Looking forward and setting ambitious targets (even if the targets are missed) demonstrates:
the ability to define what matters most;
a single-minded focus of energy and resources;
accountability to stakeholders on these big issues.
“Sustainability plans” – the corporate response?
It is now some years since the ‘Plans’ phenomenon first took off, with the launch of Marks and Spencer’s Plan A, followed by the likes of the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan. Companies began setting ambitious forward-looking targets on big meaty issues. Their reports now became a vehicle to look forward as well as back. The concept of the ‘big hairy audacious goal’ came into sustainability parlance.
This set a new tone in sustainability strategy and communications.
It is not that companies did not set targets before this time. But you would have to look at p.155 of their reporting, in a long, small-print table of performance indicators, to find a set of short-term targets for incremental improvements on mostly environmental metrics.
Among the leaders, corporate strategies and communications have started to become more ‘front-foot’, rather than an exercise in warding off the latest NGO attack. Top companies are starting to show a new confidence in understanding their own issues and ‘owning’ sustainability concerns.
This is a welcome development – it shows a clear maturing of the corporate sustainability agenda.
So stop looking back…
So, in this context, it is frustrating and disappointing to continue to find company reports that still just tell me about what Widgets Ltd has achieved in 2013. Is that performance good or bad? Where are you ultimately trying to get to?
This makes me think that too many sustainability strategies still remain static – be they ever so cleverly conceived and backed by the most eminent academic leading light.
These strategies produce reports that are purely backward looking and lacking wider context and ambition.
To keep in sync with the sustainability zeitgeist, companies need to think about strategies that look forward and wider. Their resulting communications will be all the more compelling and engaging.
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