Sustainability­guide

The first step is to understand which challenges are relevant to you and your business: Which environmental and social issues are relevant to your business?

• Does your business have any negative impact on the local environment, biodiversity or access to scarce resources? Conduct research to discover the challenges in your industry.

The stakeholder analysis identifies the company’s key stakeholders, which sustainability issues they are concerned with and which expectations and reporting requirements they have for the company.

• The stakeholder analysis

  Who are the company’s most important premise setters and what are their concerns? Owners, lenders, authorities, local communities, employees, unions, customers and suppliers are examples of parties that you affect and/or are affected by. Defining who has the greatest influence and/or is the business’s key target group is what we call doing a “stakeholder analysis”.

• Materiality analysis

  Materiality analysis is a method for identifying which measures and issues you should prioritise working on (e.g. documenting), based on the requirements and expectations of different stakeholders and what constitutes a significant opportunity or risk for you.

  It’s also a good idea to include an assessment of which regulations and legal requirements will apply to your industry in the years to come.

Well defined and specific goals are important to give direction to the daily work being performed.

• Start by describing the vision of the company. A vision describes your purpose and what position you want to achieve. Time-bound goals describe how to get there, and KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) show if you’re on the right path.

• Choose goals that are relevant to the business. Quality and consistency in the underlying data is important so you can measure improvements and compare results against other operators in the same industry.

• Remember that there may also be factors that you are able to influence. This is important in order to secure commitment to and ownership of the goals.

• When you have defined which sustainability goals are relevant and possible to impact, the next step is to incorporate goals and KPIs from stage three in the company’s business plan. Examples of goal setting may be better gender balance and diversity, a stronger safety culture with fewer serious incidents or reduced absences due to illness. If your company produces emissions into the air or water, or significant waste, recycling and reduced emissions may be the most important focus areas.

  We recommend that both social and environmental improvement measures are described in the business strategy. Sustainability is about looking after both people and nature.

• When the strategy has been put in place, it’s important to follow up regularly and assess values and ambitions. It’s possible to make adjustments along the way. It’s also important to clearly communicate goals and results to the outside world, so that what you’re doing also creates value outside of the business.