When you decide to embed sustainable best practices into your organization, as a leader, you are choosing to incorporate social and environmental goals into your business strategy. The benefit of including your social and environmental performance in your company’s overall assessment is that you will gain a deeper understanding of your organization’s dynamics.

This systemic approach to business allows leaders to capitalize on synergies and develop better strategies that will support their goals and ensure the overall resiliency of the business.

First, to understand the sustainability business model, we have to recognize that we all live in a closed-loop system, which we know as Earth. As such, all parts of this closed system (humans, animals, plants, ecological systems) are interdependent and must co-exist in dynamic equilibrium to survive and thrive.

Now to translate this to the level of an organization. A company is part of a greater whole that is the community it depends on for business. In addition to that, a company is also part of an even greater whole, the environment, upon which both the company and the community depend to survive.

So, the sustainable business model is founded on the principle that a company must take into account the impact of its operation on all its stakeholders. As such, in its decision-making process, a company has to ensure that its business activities are not engaging in unsustainable financial, social and environmental practices that could lead to a collapse of the systems upon which it is dependent.

The key concept to understand and remember is the complexity and interdependence of systems. No organization can operate independently from society nor the planet. So, to assess a company’s true performance, a corporate report should also include the organization’s social and environmental performance in addition to its financial performance.

You are probably already familiar with some of these. Many have made headlines as governments and large organizations are publicly announcing their commitments to sustainable best practices. But here are a few…

• Net zero emissions
• Pollution prevention
• Waste reduction
• Zero plastic
• Zero waste to landfill
• Lean manufacturing
• Resource conservation
• Renewable energy
• Responsible consumption
• Responsible procurement and purchasing
• Circular product economy
• Green Innovation
• Deforestation prevention
• Biodiversity and habitat loss prevention
• Third-party Certifications (LEED®, ISO 14001, B Corp®)

Again, you are probably also familiar with some of these. But here are a few…

• Employee engagement
• Workplace wellness
• Health & Safety
• Employee training & retention
• Employee professional development
• Diversity, equity and inclusion
• Customer engagement
• Supplier engagement
• Industry advocacy
• Community involvement
• Civic engagement
• Third-party Certifications (Living Wage, B Corp®…)

While there are many benefits to embedding sustainability within an organization, here are a few to get you thinking.

Improves brand image and competitive advantage.

Understanding how your business activities have an impact beyond the boundaries of your operation gives you an opportunity to expand your organization’s core values into the world at large and consequently position yourself as an industry and/or market leader.

Reveals areas of improvement.

You can’t fix what you don’t see. Taking a deeper look into the inner workings of your organization by adding new metrics into your business report often reveals processes that can be shined up or completely revamped.

Improves performance.

Once you’ve uncovered opportunities to improve upon, designing your sustainability initiative provides a framework to start tracking. measuring and benchmarking your efforts. As the saying goes, you can’t manage what you don’t measure, and we all know that more efficiency translates to less waste and better performance.

Reduces operating costs.

Although implementing sustainable business practices have often been label as a cost to the bottom line. Their development leads to streamlining operations, conserving valuable resources, derisking your value chain, increasing employee productivity, retention and talent recruitment just to list a few. It brings long-term results and ongoing reductions in operating costs.