Redefining your organisation’s performance indicators
The catastrophic impacts of climate change and pollution are well known.
Marginal temperature increases across the globe trigger environmental degradation and are a significant catalyst behind the frequent natural disasters experienced worldwide. In addition, mass amounts of non-compostable plastic waste continue to contaminate our waterways, wilderness areas, and oceans. This dirty issue is exacerbated by difficulties in government-led recycling programs and a need for more safe landfill areas.
Redefining corporate success measures
Corporations and small businesses inflict environmental impact daily through their supply chain carbon emissions and manufacturing waste. While this is generally accepted as an unavoidable part of doing business, it is in the interest of every company to implement sustainability measures that offset and reduce any adverse effects on the planet.
This is good in theory, but organisations often have a fiscal responsibility to shareholders. With pressure to deliver profits year-on-year, many organisations prioritise financial profit over any other success measure. This focus on the bottom line is detrimental to a company’s sustainability goals, particularly as earth-friendly actions can be costly to implement.
When changes include large investments, such as redesigning office spaces or overhauling the supply chain, it can often have more up-front costs but usually saves money in the long run.
Social & environmental KPIs
In order to factor sustainability into the annual performance report, businesses must redefine how they measure success to include sustainability as a key performance indicator (KPI). By having social and environmental metrics in addition to financial objectives, it’s possible to keep sustainability top of mind in operations and not just something that is an additional ‘nice to have’ element
Drivers for organisational change
Several vital drivers support the implementation of sustainable change and its long-term success.
- The first is legal regulation. By demanding a base level of sustainability by law, businesses will be required to review their operations and apply changes.
- Public reputation is another strong motivator for sustainable change. The general public is becoming increasingly aware of corporate social and environmental responsibility and considers this when investing in a listed stock, choosing a company to work for, or a brand to buy from.
- Finally, understanding how to account for and report on sustainable efforts is another essential component of lasting change. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) reporting helps to build a more holistic look at business practices. It gives corporations a degree of responsibility for the consequences of their activities and provides a way to account for their impacts.
Measuring sustainable change
Sustainable change is a long-term plan. Therefore, businesses must track incremental progress and share the impact of the change over time with employees and customers, thus fostering widespread engagement in the change process.
A CSR report can accompany an organisation’s annual financial report by outlining the company’s activities with a focus on social and environmental performance over the year. Companies can use these insights to develop metrics and management frameworks to improve performance year on year.
This intentional, sustainable change from corporate entities is necessary if we are to avoid disastrous repercussions on our planet. With this in mind, we must strive to continuously assess, correct and improve our impact on the planet. The sustainability changes implemented by business owners now will be a step in the right direction toward a better future.
