What are the best practices for creating a culture of sustainability in your organization?

Ideally, you embed sustainability into your corporate purpose so you become a purpose-driven organization. Then you ensure your sustainability strategy aligns with that, or even better: your sustainability strategy is fully embedded in your business strategy. It should be ONE strategy in the end instead of separate strategies (while having separate strategies might be a good intermediate step to take).

So the first and foremost step is to understand your goals. Set a clear vision of what you want to achieve, what is the purpose of your sustainability seeking? This will help you create a road map identifying your focal points, where could hot spots exist, and align your priorities about which sustainability efforts you need to seek. It also helps create a clear vision for the teams to align on and hence they can contribute effectively.

More than just defining sustainability goals, your organization should build a climate transition plan in line with latest and most ambitious science-based recommendations. Here, you should consider to: • Commit to reducing emissions by setting robust science-based emission reduction targets across all Scopes, 1, 2 & 3 (e.g. in line with SBTi) • Define a climate resilience strategy fully integrating climate and nature, where objectives aiming to safeguard nature and ecosystems are included. This includes activities and projects that work towards Nature’s protection and restoration using for benefits beyond emission reductions • Communicate your sustainability and climate commitments both internally to your employees and externally.

Set clear sustainability goals, integrate sustainability into the organizational strategy, and develop sustainable policies and procedures. Provide training and awareness programs, foster employee engagement, and measure progress using key performance indicators. Recognize and celebrate achievements, engage stakeholders, and strive for continuous improvement. This alignment creates a shared commitment to sustainability, improves performance, and positions the organization as a responsible leader.

To create a culture of sustainability across your company, it is important to embed sustainability in both your informal and formal practices. Informal practices are, however you communicate (especially leadership communications), how you share beliefs and values, how you collaborate and co-create new ideas, how you highlight people who show the right behaviors and create an environment of psychological safety (which is key for innovation). Formal practices are job descriptions, training plans, policies and strategic documents, development plans, audits etc. When you embed sustainability both formally and informally, people will realize you really mean it.

To really reach results you need to empower your employees to align with the preset sustainability goals. A very important thing is to make sure the employees already have the skills to carry out such activities. Train your employees, give them support to take action and keep an open door policy to listen to approaches in the sustainability activities.

Involve stakeholders, such as customers, suppliers, and community members, in your sustainability efforts. Seek their input, listen to their concerns, and collaborate on initiatives that have a positive impact on the environment and society. This engagement helps build stronger relationships and demonstrates your commitment to working collectively towards a sustainable future. It will also reflect in building a trust relationship between you and your customers and highlight you commitment towards sustainbility.

Foster a culture of continuous improvement by regularly evaluating and refining sustainability practices. Encourage feedback from employees and stakeholders on how sustainability initiatives can be enhanced. Stay informed about emerging sustainability trends and technologies to adapt and innovate accordingly.