SUPPPORT FOR IMPACT – SUSTAINABILITY TRAINING & CONSULTING
At Inspiration for Good, our goal is to help foster positive outcomes for people and planet, and to this end we work across sectors and industries to support them on their missions toward meaningful change in the world. We support organisations to develop sustainability strategies and practices that can be feasibly actioned, with outcomes that are attainable and maintainable.
There’s no doubt that sustainability is a hot topic, and however you personally feel about it, there’s a general consensus on its importance… there is no escaping it! Mushrooming requirements around sustainability and impact reporting, is now coupled with an increased demand by consumers for transparency around businesses sustainability practices but also the real impact. It is no longer enough for businesses to just do no harm, they now have to also be known (not just seen) to be doing good.
It might seem like a minefield… Sustainability, Going Green, Carbon Offsetting, Net Zero….it can be confusing, and difficult to know what the most important things are for you to focus on. Where do you start, what do you change, what policies and procedures do you need to have in place? With mushrooming sustainability standards, increasing reporting mandates as well as countless reporting mechanisms and software options entering the market, it can be easy to feel so overwhelmed, that you become immobilized.
Don’t be. We’re here to help! Whether you’re new to the sustainability journey or already on it, we can help you to make sense of the requirements and develop strategies that work best for your organization, whatever stage you’re at.
The demand for ‘green’ is growing. Both in B2B and B2C sectors, decisions are being made with purpose in mind, and not just profit. We can help you navigate, implement and make the most of significant benefits that come from ‘going green’ and embracing sustainability. Let us help you to future-proof your business and future-proof the planet.
WHAT WE DO
We help you to understand what sustainability means in the wider context and specific to you. We look at the priorities of purpose, people, partners, places, planet and profit to support embedded sustainability practices that are feasible for you to implement, and allow for ongoing impact reporting and measurement.
We help you to make sense of what it all means in practice for your business, with feasible, practical and manageable strategies and can support you to:
Determine the extent to which you incorporate sustainability practices
- Set the right goals that are aligned with your business purpose
- Incorporate sustainability into your strategy and operations for impact and reporting
- Engage with stakeholders for impact measurement
- Leverage your sustainability story for brand value
WHAT WE OFFER
BESPOKE CONSULTING helps you to get you started on your sustainability journey and is designed to provide an overview of sustainability requirements, and will give you the resources you need to determine a baseline for an organisation to work from. At the end of the training you will better understand:
- Sustainability and sustainability practices
- Why sustainability insights and expertise is necessary as a matter of good practice
- Why these matter to organisations
- The difference between reporting behaviour and measuring impact
- The importance of integrating mechanisms for measurement, assessment, reporting and verification
- The importance of actionable systems, policies and procedures
SUSTAINABILITY PLAYBOOK helps you come to terms with what sustainability means for you. At the end of the training you will better understand:
- Why sustainability matters and factors you need to consider for your organisation
- What the COP26 deal means for business
- How to benchmark and develop a plan to improve practices and embed systems into your organisation
- Mechanisms for impact reporting, management and measurement
- How to leverage your sustainability efforts
- Stakeholder engagement and impact measurement
GET SUSTAINABLE BOOTCAMP if you’re already familiar with the basics of sustainability, have an idea of your business activity and want to leave with some achieved outcomes. By the end of the bootcamp you would have:
- Identified the factors you need to consider for sustainability practices in your organisation
- Created a benchmark of your organisation’s sustainability position and developed a plan to improve practices and embed systems into your organisation
- Determined the mechanisms for impact reporting, management and measurement that you can utilise
- Developed a plan to leverage your sustainability efforts
- Determined key stakeholders to engage with developed an impact measurement plan
Want a little more support but think that you can’t afford it? We also offer affordable retainers, so GET IN TOUCH to find out more. Our consulting helps fund the community projects we work on. Check them out HERE.
The context
Sustainability doesn’t mean sacrificing profits or putting success on the backburner. Instead, it has become a crucial element in any organisation’s success strategy. An organisation that doesn’t factor in sustainability risks being less successful in a number of measures, including profitability, impact, growth, and employee retention. Organisations that work toward building the necessary systems and processes for actions, assessment, measuring and reporting not just on behaviours, but also impact, will be best placed for success and growth.
The marketing buzzword has become a strategic priority, with stakeholders demanding sustainability, investors showing an increased interest in social and environmental impact and companies with the highest environmental, social, and governance (ESG) scores have seen above-average growth over the previous five years. This is coupled with an increasing number of conscious consumers, with preferences shifting from wanting sustainability to demanding it. Even entire product lines can be affected globally, like plastic straws effectively becoming taboo after a video of a plastic straw stuck in a turtle’s nose went viral. These issues matter to consumers and are driving product and service choices. In addition to this, employees now strive to work for more sustainability focused companies. Attracting and retaining top talent now also requires taking values like impact and inclusion seriously.
Whether it’s for the greater good, or because the nature of business and the market is changing as the demand for sustainable products, goods and services increases – sustainability matters, and in time, it will matter even more. Soon all organisations won’t be able to afford to NOT effectively integrate strategies, systems and mechanisms for measuring impact.
Reporting on key environmental, social and governance (ESG) practices, and delivery on SDGs is key as interest in sustainable investment alternatives grows. ESG is about the risks and opportunities which could impact a company’s ability to create long-term value, and there is a movement toward and increasing demand for reporting not just on behaviours, but also on impact by governments and financial institutions.
There is also an increase in pressure from governments to encourage trade that takes into account ESG practices. Institutional investors, asset managers, financial institutions and other stakeholders are increasingly relying on these reports and ratings to assess and measure company ESG performance over time and as compared to peers. This assessment and measurement often forms the basis of informal and shareholder proposal-related investor engagement with companies on ESG matters, with an increasing move toward responsible finance.
While ESG reporting is more mandated than SDG reporting, the public is also aligning their choices and decisions with organisations that better demonstrate their impact and how they contribute to these goals and there is a growing community of more conscious consumers who are holding governments and organisations to account, who show a preference for supporting companies that are environmentally and socially responsible.
The major challenge for most organisations is that they have no idea where to start with reporting or measuring impact. There are numerous frameworks that can be used to measure and report, there is no single standard, and each framework has different indicators. Just 10 of the main frameworks have around 735 KPIs as well as different indicators within categories (environmental, social and governance), appearing at different frequencies. Report and ratings methodology, scope and coverage, vary greatly and can often be an obstacle to organisations developing sustainability strategies, and implementing plans for measuring activity and impact.
Despite often being engaged in activity which could be leveraged in ESG and other SDG reporting, there are also limitations in being able to access appropriate training, policies, resources, and expertise to set up the systems required to integrate assessments, impact measurement and reporting into normal day-to-day operations in a way that is manageable and maintainable. We aim to help!!