The Universal Climate-Impact Playbook: Initiatives Any Company--Even Yours--Can Take Today to Strengthen Your Business (Part II)
Digital & Other Less-Conventional Ways to Build a Competitive Advantage While Becoming More Sustainable
In Part I of the “Universal Climate-Impact Playbook”, I looked at traditional or conventional ways to have an environmental impact—things like smarter packaging and waste mitigation. Things people tend to think of when they think of making a business more environmentally sound and profitable.
Now we’re going to look further afield, to some areas your team may not have considered before. But, just like the more conventional areas, these are opportunities to strengthen your business by making your business more environmentally sustainable.
Employee Engagement
Typical Impact: High
Investment Required: Low
I love programs that drive employee impact on the climate crisis—and even better, so do your employees! There are literally hundreds of opportunities that fall into this category, ranging from the very simple (things like tools you can include on your employee portal to direct employees to environmental volunteer opportunities) to more substantial (things like environmental-focused 401ks and other savings products). This category is an area where innovative teams can really design an internal offering that makes a huge impact—and is a differentiator that sets your company apart.
Why does that matter?
Because employee retention is a significant driver of both increased productivity and lower costs. Don’t believe me? Consider the company that spends 6 months filling a role, another 3 months training that new hire up, another 3 months before they’re really productive on the team, only to lose them after the first year and have to repeat the cycle.
And current trends aren’t encouraging: According to Gartner, annual turnover is projected to be 50-75% higher than before the pandemic, and it’s now taking 18% longer to find and hire someone. Your company should embrace any opportunity to keep your top employees.
Financial
Typical Impact: High
Investment Required: Medium
Opportunities that fall into the "Financial” category often fall off leaders’ radars—but there’s a significant number of options here, and they can have a huge impact. Leaders think of regulatory compliance issues when they think about finance opportunities in environmental sustainability, but there’s so much more.
Sustainability opportunities in the finance category include things like green investment overlays for the company treasury, impact-linked executive bonuses, green procurement policies and carbon removal purchase programs.
While some opportunities in this category (like carbon-removal credit purchase programs) are strictly a cost, combined into a broader product strategy they can create a unique product offering that no one else in your industry can match.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at Microsoft’s comprehensive carbon-removal credit retirement strategy.
Digital
Typical Impact: Low / Medium
Investment Required: Low
One opportunity falls into this category that every business should incorporate, as a foundational effort on their sustainability work: Implementing a carbon accounting (or “Sustainability Management”) system. It might just be a spreadsheet to start with, but as I wrote about earlier, you need to start tracking so you can see the impacts of your work.
Outside of implementing a tracking and reporting platform, there are a lot of simple steps your business can take to reduce your climate impact from your digital activities. For instance, are you storing 3-hour long, 1080p videos from video calls from 2022 that no one will ever look at, ever again? Do you have 150,000 unread emails that date back to 2006? Anything stored in the cloud means a server, somewhere, is consuming electricity to keep your file alive. Maybe its time you culled them? (Saving both the planet and your storage budget in process).
The overall climate impact of these improvements (beyond implementing a Sustainability Management System) is likely to be low, but the effort needed to achieve them is minimal. Why not take a look?
There are likely opportunities to improve the environmental sustainability of your business everywhere you look. Approaching these opportunities intelligently, in a holistic, strategic manner, can have a significant impact on the competitiveness of your business.
Environmental sustainability isn’t just a feel-good issue for your business, it’s a way for you to expand market share, beat your competition and make your business more competitive and profitable.
What are you waiting for? Isn’t it time you got started?