Insights on HOW to Integrate Sustainability Across a Company

Integration of sustainability across a company is becoming critical for long-term business success. During a working group session at the recent Aspen ESG Summit, we sought to learn what internal change agents – especially those with a sustainability mandate – are actually doing to drive this change. What strategies and practices are they finding to be most effective?

Here is what we learned in a fast-paced 75-minute workshop about changemaking from leaders in diverse industries – from finance to manufacturing to energy and beyond. Although specific practices differed, three cross-cutting insights emerged from the conversation about what is required to embed sustainability more deeply across business functions.

1.????? Shift from abstract to concrete.

Sustainability is an abstract concept. It covers a lot of territory – from reducing emissions to building a robust and diverse talent pipeline. To turn any aspiration into action it is essential to develop a common understanding of what sustainability means for your company and for the people affected by change. ?

Based on their own experience, participants offered this advice:

• Be ready to let go of the terms like “sustainability” and “ESG.” These terms are vague and often polarizing. Focusing on specific issues that must be managed is a more effective way to achieve greater integration.
• Help employees understand what’s “in it for them” if sustainability were more fully integrated. Invite discussion about how these changes would benefit them. One participant, for example, who worked in a consulting company, said that the benefits of change became more tangible to employees when costs of non-action were converted into billable hours.
• Each business unit should clarify its responsibility for delivering clearly defined outcomes so that employees better understand the role they can or should play in delivering that outcome. ?
• Study peer companies and their approaches to various sustainability challenges so you can benchmark your own performance in concrete ways. Then identify strategies to achieve competitive advantage.
• Articulate big picture goals but start small by setting short-term milestones that enable everyone to achieve and track progress.
• When a strategy is in place, have a plan to communicate it continuously to the entire organization.

2.????? Create new collaborations – inside and outside the company

Integration of sustainability across a company is a team sport. No matter how talented the sustainability team is, those experts cannot achieve transformation on their own. For employees who value efficiency and just want to get the job done, this process of co-creating goals and results can feel like a time sink. In fact, moving from siloed to matrixed responsibility is the only way to establish a shared vision, achieve commitment to change, and allocate ownership for results.

What are steps you can take to move in this direction?

• Establish internal working groups or workshops that bring together a range of expertise and perspectives. In these sessions, facilitate dialogues with the intent to define challenges and desired outcomes, set goals and milestones that make it possible to measure progress along the way. Allot enough time to hear from different points of view and to give people a chance to generate ideas.
• Involve senior leaders. Their engagement is critical for success. While some corporate leaders will embrace the idea of these collaborations, others may be more reluctant. One participant described their approach to building commitment on the part of senior executives. They conducted interviews with execs which focused on three questions: In the sustainability domain, how do you want your company to be seen? How is the company measuring up today? What might we need to do to close the gap? These questions provoked reflection and elicited thoughtful input about next steps.
• Establish a process for bringing in customers to share their goals and approach to sustainability. In return, communicate your approach to them. In these frank discussions, learn from each other and find ways to deepen relationships.
• Invite experts from outside the company to provide fresh perspectives. Some companies institutionalize this practice by establishing advisory councils which routinely meet with senior executives, business unit managers, and sustainability professionals.
• Be open to partnering with non-traditional stakeholders for us, both within the same industry and from other industries, NGOs, multilateral organizations, and the public sector.

3.????? Develop new governance frameworks

Making headway on integration doesn’t stop with clearly defining goals and desired outcomes. These efforts must be underpinned by a new framework of ownership and accountability. Participants in this discussion noted many of the seemingly mundane, but critical, approaches for ensuring these new governance frameworks are in place:

• Assign the job of creating and sharing a workplan.
• Ensure ongoing engagement. One participant mentioned how important it is to get regular meetings set on calendars, a simple step for ensuring continuity.
• Develop reporting mechanisms that are clear and transparent. Some companies develop scorecards and commit to sharing progress reports in all-staff meetings on a regular basis.
• Embrace AI. Finding ways to leverage this technology may facilitate compliance and decision-making. But it requires a commitment to testing and learning and crafting the guidelines that will govern its use.

There is much more to explore in these insights from corporate changemakers. However, what is clear is that integrating sustainability into corporate strategy, decision making, and practice requires intentionality and patience – as well as a commitment to try fresh approaches and to listen to diverse voices as decisions are made about what goals to set and how to achieve them.

More takeaways from the 2024 Aspen ESG Summit are available here.

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