There is a lot of talk in the corporate world these days about sustainability. Thankfully, more and more companies are recognizing that sustainable business practices simply make good business sense — and that customer, consumer and even investor expectations go beyond quality products and steady profits to include social, environmental and ethical performance.
As we turn a page on a new calendar year, a number of trends will be important for businesses to consider as they advance along their sustainably journey:
- Embracing different values. The financial crisis is causing all of us to step away from short term decision making and think more about the long term. While this quarter and this fiscal year seem oh-so important at the moment, investing in the future will likely yield even greater dividends over time. Unilever paved the way for this long-term approach when they moved away from quarterly investor reports to focus on long-range planning that includes robust environmental and social initiatives.
- Shining a light on ethics and human rights. Human rights and ethical business practices need to move further in to the corporate spotlight. Companies like HP are setting a high bar with impressive supply chain, social and environmental programs and refreshing transparency on challenging issues such as conflict minerals.
- Empowering women. In recent years women have made impressive gains in education and employment. And, increasingly, companies are realizing that women control a massive percentage of spending power. Yet, still, women hold only 3.8 percent of the Fortune 500 CEO positions. Thankfully, with initiatives from P&G, Coca-Cola, NIKE and others, we’re seeing companies embrace the business value in empowering women.
- Sustainable solutions are shared solutions. Increasingly, business is realizing that partnership and collaboration are key to addressing society’s largest challenges. Whether through open models of innovation or unique public-private partnerships, collaboration and networking are showing us that we succeed best when we succeed together. The Consumer Goods Forum is setting a high bar in advancing collaborative and sustainable solutions related to packaging, deforestation, refrigeration, social compliance and other hot topics that impact industry.
- Happiness will get its due. It can be easy to be skeptical about the future, but the paradox is that, when surrounded by so much negativity, many of us reset the way we value happiness. Look for more alternative workings styles, more thoughtful consumption and a subtle (at least for now) shift away from materialism.
Everyone can play an active role as a sustainability Sherpa. If we all work to better understand these trends, we can spark a movement that brings sustainability one step closer to main stream.
This post is produced by B+SP’s Sustainability Center of Excellence, a team of experts, idealists and actionists committed to driving mutual benefit for business and society through the development and support of sustainability efforts. Contributions by Mark Eikenberry.
