Corporate governance commitment is the secret of successful sustainability programs. You’ve got to have set alignment from the top of the organization to make sure your company is running a successful sustainability program.

After you’ve created an effective initiative, you need to get employees on board. After all, as we’ve talked about numerous times, employees complete sustainability tasks. Not a committee, the employees. 

You’ve got your initiative set and ready to distribute. You know who should be doing it, so now it’s time to bring those people on board.

Sustainability initiatives are how you take sustainability from idea to process. Many small businesses have an idea of what they want to do, have done their version of an audit, but aren’t sure how to create an effective initiative to make sustainability happen. An initiative usually comes after the audit.

In this case, an initiative is a task to make achieve sustainability in business. Whether you’re trying to reduce waste or water, you want to achieve something to make sustainability happen in your business.

"Stakeholders" and “stakeholder engagement” are prominent sustainability buzzwords. Stakeholders usually get associated with large companies tromping about in remote areas, or companies that are on a mea culpa tour for doing something bad. But stakeholder engagement can be crucial in building a smaller business. Businesses can use stakeholder relationships to boost their sustainability practices, or just to strengthen their business.

If you’re still deciding if this will be the year of sustainability, contemplate your options using an opportunity cost model. The benefits of sustainability are well documented in the press.

How do you tell your sustainability story without releasing a sustainability report? Large companies use sustainability reports because they are required to publish annual reports. They can be useful PR and publicity tools for companies.  It can be hard to find the time or money for smaller companies to publish such grandiose reports. Reports can also seem outdated for smaller companies. 

We humans are notorious for our knee jerk, judgmental reactions. Hearing something and saying “ That’s not me” “ I don’t like that,” “ I can never do that.” Have you ever had a snap judgment define your thought process? I've had snap judgments on everything from lima beans to the Cleveland Browns to hedge funds. 

Business owners are also prone to snap judgments at work. We have to climb through a lot of muck and review so much information, it’s easy to become biased against strategies. We’ve all been caught glossing over something or using the phrase “ I know about that” or “ I’m not spending time on that.” 

Are you an organization that’s ready to get on board with sustainability and make a commitment to build attention to social and environmental aspects, you should definitely consider getting B Corp certified. If you’re interested in corporate sustainability certifications, I urge you to look at B Corp certification. This certification guides you and tells you exactly what to do to accomplish sustainability at your company through its “people, profit, plant” model.

Sustainability reporting, also called ESG reporting, is just as it sounds, reporting on your sustainability progress. You can read the previous blog about why sustainability reporting is important. Let’s talk about sustainability reporting as it relates to 2019 wrap-ups, and planning for future success.