"At it's foundation sustainable development is a productivity tool. It reduces business inputs in a way that meets favour with customers."
Why sustainable development and CSR is a must for every business
- Creates new business opportunities.
- Reduces costs and increases profitability.
- Increases customer preference and loyalty.
- Helps meet supply chain requirements.
- Enhances and differentiates brand reputation.
- Strengthens staff and team spirit.
- Consolidates business partnerships.
- Reduces contingent liability.
Developing your Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility strategy
Sustainable Development and CSR is much more than an add-on or even change of culture. Add-ons cost money. The proper approach is to build a business model that reduce inputs and costs in a way that finds favour with customers, supply chains and regulatory agencies. It is a business model and strategy that has ethics and respect for shareholders, customers, society and the environment at the root of every governance and management decision. If you would like more information on developing and adopting a CSR policy, please contact Forté for an obligation free "conversation". Click here to contact Tony Smale.
Forté's Sustainable Development credentials
Tony Smale has completed Landcare Research's carboNZero Programme consultant Training, the Sustainability Appraisal Master Class, and is on the Foundation for Research Science and Technology's Global Expert Panel. He has a long history in the field including anchor speaker for the Ministry for the Environment Business and Sustainability workshops series and was part of the New Zealand delegation to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Bonn Germany. Helen Smale manages a world class water quality environmental monitoring programme and has global recognition for her expertise in that field. So Forté is well placed to help you develop and implement your sustainable management and corporate social responsibility plans.
Defining sustainable business and corporate social responsibility
There are numerous definitions of sustainable development, some more technical than others. Over recent years sustainable development and corporate social responsibility have been converging to the point that they are now virtually indistinguishable. That is the case in the following definition: "Sustainable development is a process of positive socio-economic and biophysical change or wealth (capital) creation that meets the needs of all people and can be continued indefinitely into the future without undermining the natural systems upon which it depends or foreclosing the range of opportunities available to future generations" (Sustainability Appraisal Master Class – Landcare Research).
Let's translate that from "science-speak" to something meaningful to business.
Sustainable management and corporate social responsibility is "A business model that can be applied indefinitely for the continuing mutual benefit of shareholders, customers, suppliers, employees, communities, and the natural environment, now and in the future."
Sustainable development/CSR can be the opportunity of the century
"If New Zealand followed through on that pledge to become carbon neutral and businesses in every sector searched for new approaches to accomplish that goal, they would find the world beating a path to their door to license the new processes and innovations involved."
Former US Vice President Al Gore speaking in New Zealand in November 2006:
Pursuing sustainable business offers Kiwi businesses a huge multiplier opportunity. The opportunity lies in turning the new products, processes and systems that history suggests we will develop to ensure our products and services are sustainable, into business opportunities. The carboNZero Programme is a good example. It is a tool to measure and manage firms' carbon inventories that has been turned into a service with global commercial potential. We have typically failed to recognise the commercial potential in such intellectual assets. (Click here to read more on creating value from intellectual assets).
We have the option to treat the demands for sustainable development as yet another imposition (which many do) or turn it to our advantage. (Click here to read Forté's report on their research in the UK market). Sustainability credentials may at the present time only have a small affect on price but we know three things for certain:
1. Sustainability and CSR are now criteria formally applied by supply chain managers;
2. Given the choice between sustainable and "non-sustainable products/services, consumers will choose the former;
3. The number of consumers making sustainable product/service choices is growing rapidly. That means that demand for non-sustainable goods and services will gradually diminish and inevitably result in downward price pressure.
So critical is sustainable development and CSR that Forté believes it is the responsibility of every CEO, Director and Economic Development Agency to ensure that their firm, sector or region has a response strategy in place modelled around sustainable development and corporate social responsibility principles.
The high value opportunity lies in the intellectual assets that history suggests we will develop to make sustainable goods and services. These are likely to have more value than the marginal change in value of the sustainable goods and services themselves!
Sustainable/Responsible business is profitable business
In our key markets, sustainability and CSR is now so embedded in supply chain specifications and consumers' minds that it is no longer an optional extra. Fresh agricultural exports (like apples and Kiwifruit) exports are already subject to requirements like NZGAP/EuroGAP that contain increasing elements of corporate social responsibility. The recent fiasco in the global financial markets is only going to drive demands for CSR. CSR and sustainability offer strong opportunities to position your business in line with rapidly developing consumer trends like the LOHAS (Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability) demographic (Click here to read about the LOHASs). Firms that engage in sustainable development /corporate social responsibility are likely to gain considerably as demonstrated by the Dow Jones Sustainability Index that shows that firms committed to sustainability consistently outperform all others. The FTSE4Good Index is a joint initiative between the London Stock Exchange and the Financial Times of London. A Google search for "FTSE4Good, index" provides an insight to the significance of the Index.