80% Of CEOs Feel Pressured To Improve Human Sustainability

5 07 2024

The C-Suite is yielding to pressures to focus more on human sustainability in the workplace. Image ” Getty

By Bryan Robinson, Ph.D. via Forbes • Reposted: July 5, 2024

Recently, Deloitte released The important role of leaders in advancing human sustainability Report in partnership with Workplace Intelligence and based on a study of 3,150 employees, managers and C-level executives across the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia. Now in its third year, the survey reveals that the majority of the C-suite, including around eight out of 10 CEOs, say they’re feeling pressure from employees (82%), customers (78%), investors (78%), partners (77%) and board members (77%) to make public commitments to improve human sustainability.

I spoke by email with Sue Cantrell, vice president of products, workforce strategies at Deloitte Consulting, who defines human sustainability as, “the degree to which an organization creates value for people as human beings, leaving them with greater health and well-being, stronger skills and greater employability, good jobs, opportunities for advancement, progress toward equity, increased belonging, and heightened connection to purpose.”

She told me the survey found that shifting from a mindset that centers on extracting value from people toward an approach that refocuses on helping humans thrive is a leading course of action, especially in the face of growing stakeholder pressures, dwindling worker health and other workforce-related risks.

One of the more surprising facts, according to the report, is that leaders are mostly embracing this pressure: 88% would like their pay to be tied to human sustainability metrics, and 71% believe their company’s leadership should change if they aren’t advancing human sustainability. Around three out of four executives agree that human sustainability is an enterprise risk that should be measured and monitored (73%) and discussed at the board level (75%).

The report claims that doing well by workers and the world offers long-term benefits for both people and organizations. I recently reported on a meQ survey that supports these claims, showing that when employers refocus on employee hope and well-being, workers are less likely to suffer from burnout (74%), anxiety (74%) and depression (75%). And 33% are less likely to endorse quiet quitting.

But to help companies move their human sustainability efforts forward and reap these benefits, Cantrell recommends that leaders increase their understanding of worker realities at their own organizations. “In our survey, most executives (93%) and workers (88%) agree that the purpose of a company should be to create value not just for shareholders, but for human beings and society as well.” Cantrell points out that data from the survey also uncovers a disconnect between workers and leaders when it comes to taking action, as the following statistics indicate:

  • Advancing human sustainability. 82% of executives believe their company is advancing human sustainability, but just 56% of workers agree. The report found that some leaders fail to recognize that for most people surveyed, work is a negative rather than a positive force in their lives.
  • Company’s positive effect on employee well-being. Around 90% of executives believe working for their company has a positive effect on employee well-being, skills development, career advancement, inclusion and belonging and their sense of purpose and meaning. But just 60% (or fewer) of workers agree.
  • Improvement of well-being dimensions. Seven out of 10 executives believe well-being dimensions—a key component of human sustainability—improved for their employees. But workforce well-being continues to need focus as only around one out of three workers say their physical (34%), mental (32%), financial (35%) and social (31%) well-being improved last year.
  • Seven out of 10 workers say if their organization increased its commitment to human sustainability, this would improve their overall experience at work (72%) and increase their engagement and job satisfaction (71%), productivity (70%), desire to stay with their company long-term (70%) and trust in their company’s leadership (69%).
  • Eighty-two percent of executives say companies should be required to publicly report their human sustainability metrics. However, 81% admit their own organization isn’t doing enough when it comes to making public commitments around human issues. Around a third (32%) of these leaders say this is because the goals they could realistically accomplish are trivial and they’re embarrassed to make public commitments around them.
  • A significant majority of executives (88%) would like their compensation to be tied to human sustainability metrics. Remarkably, nearly half (47%) would like at least 75% of their compensation to be linked to these metrics. What’s more, 61% of the C-suite say they’d accept a pay cut to work for a company that is advancing human sustainability.

“It’s promising that so many of today’s leaders are willing to take ownership of human sustainability,” said Dan Schawbel, managing partner at Workplace Intelligence.“However, some executives don’t realize that their own employees are dealing with a sub-optimal work experience. The disconnects uncovered in our research should be a call to action for leaders as they embark on their mission to create greater value for all stakeholders within the broader human ecosystem.”

Cantrell suggests that to close that gap, leaders must consider using metrics focused on human outcomes, making public commitments around these metrics and aligning compensation with these outcomes. She believes that by prioritizing a positive human impact, organizations can reap the benefits of attracting new talent, appealing to customers and clients and increasing profitability, while workers can experience a positive effect on their well-being, skills development career advancement, inclusion and belonging, and their sense of purpose and meaning.

“Embracing human sustainability can have benefits for both business and people,” declares Paul Silverglate, U.S. executive accelerators leader and Deloitte’s U.S. technology sector vice chair. “Today’s C-suite has the opportunity to help ensure it is prioritized at the highest levels of their organizations, helping them become more rewarding and productive places to work.”

Renée Zavislak, a burnout expert and licensed California-based therapist, informed me that corporations big and small are starting to realize that refusing to proactively address employee well-being isn’t an option, but many businesses are learning this lesson the hard way. Burned out employees are costing employers $3,400 of every $10,000 in salary as productivity decreases. And depression alone is costing the global economy $1 billion in lost productivity.

“Companies need to respond to employee needs by respecting boundaries and the right to disconnect before resentment and burnout make top performers leave,” Zavislak declares. “Companies usually wait until it’s too late to act on burnout. They need to start embracing preventative solutions.” Zavislak concludes that when someone’s job security depends on working 60-80 hours a week, and they have to take calls on vacation, it means companies aren’t taking mental health seriously.

“There is an incredible momentum building for organizations to make meaningful change, adds Jen Fisher, retired managing director at Deloitte U.S. “But leaders should move away from a legacy mindset that centers on extracting value from people and instead embrace the concept of human sustainability, which can support the long-term, collective well-being of individuals, organizations and society.”

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bryanrobinson/2024/07/03/80-of-ceos-feel-pressured-to-improve-human-sustainability/


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, reputation management, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding

Three Sustainability Strategies Even The Busiest CEO Can Commit To

1 02 2024

Photo: Getty

By Noel Asmar, Forbes Councils Member via Forbes • Reposted: February 2, 2024 

Noel Asmar is the Founder and Creative Director of Noel Asmar Group of Companies, which services spa, healthcare, hospitality & equestrian.

The last decade has brought a seismic shift in public awareness around the climate crisis we face. Consumers are increasingly demanding businesses become more accountable, but often, the path to building a sustainable business is far from convenient. If I’ve learned one thing working in busy industries like spa, hospitality and healthcare, it’s for meaningful change to happen, solutions have to be simplified.

As we enter 2024, here are three steps any leader can take to lessen their company’s environmental footprint, regardless of their organization’s size or resources:

Gather data on your operations.

When it comes to measuring your environmental impact as a business, the simplest way to get started is to collect data on your operations. Start by taking stock of what your business purchases and disposes of both in quantity and nature, then assess what end-of-life options you have.

Often when businesses make purchasing decisions, we’re focused on aesthetic or performance—while those qualities are important, considering whether or not a product can be easily upcycled, recycled or degraded in the landfill is one of the most effective ways to lessen your environmental impact.

For example, in our business certain polyester fabrics can be used to make insulation for homes. By talking to your manufacturers and suppliers, you can become more educated on the circularity of your products.

The average small business spends $40K annually and product costs are largely a business’s greatest expense. Fortune 500s, on the other hand, can easily exceed $100 billion in annual spending. When we start to gather concrete data and calculate our environmental impact into our purchasing decisions, we can create a ripple effect that benefits all stakeholders.

Invest in quality upfront.

What set our company apart from competitors when we first entered the market in 2002 was our unwavering focus on quality. For our uniforms, we intentionally selected commercial-grade fabrics that withstood heavy washing, were fade-resistant and repelled materials like oil, which practitioners came into regular contact with. This decision was controversial because it set our price point higher than the industry norm.

Investing in high-quality products may throw off the balance sheet for businesses initially, but the long-term economic benefits often outweigh the short-term strain on budgets.

For example during the economic downturn between ’09 and ’11, many hotel properties were forced to cut spending. During this time, I recall getting a call from the spa director of a major resort in Scottsdale, Arizona. He mentioned how grateful he was that the property had invested in our uniforms; while their competitors were struggling to replace faded and damaged uniforms monthly, their staff was still well clad in uniforms that had maintained their color and condition.

Investing in quality upfront, isn’t just an economic play, it also greatly reduces the amount of waste businesses contribute to the landfill. According to the UN, consumers purchase 60% more clothing now than we did 15 years ago, and each item is kept only half as long.

This “throw away” mentality is the reason 134 million tonnes of textiles are expected to be discarded annually by 2030. Considering nearly 85% of all textiles thrown away in the U.S. end up in the landfill or burned, reducing how often your business has to replace goods is a win for the environment and your bottom line.

Find like-minded partners.

One of the greatest challenges businesses face when it comes to responsibly disposing of their waste is navigating logistics. Becoming a sustainable business is highly interdependent on the systems around us. Often recycling requirements are complex and businesses don’t have the resources to fulfill them. For this reason, establishing cross-beneficial partnerships can make a big difference.

A few years ago, my company started a sustainability initiative in an effort to break down the barriers spas and hotels were facing in responsibly disposing of their textiles. In doing so, it became clear recycling stations wanted products to be perfectly segregated down to the yarn, and the big ones had minimum volume requirements. These specific requirements weren’t realistic for spas and hotels because they disrupted the flow of operations, acting as a barrier to doing the right thing.

So we started to explore partnerships in the areas we serviced. We teamed up with a like-minded waste management company and carved out a solution that allowed us to utilize their recycling factories for our spa and hotel partners in the U.S., regardless of their volume.

When you use sustainability as a lens to filter partnerships, you’d be surprised at what becomes possible. For us, it’s even resulted in working with fabric mills to create products from recycled water bottles that naturally degrade if our uniforms do end up in the landfill.

The journey toward sustainability is not without challenge, but it doesn’t have to be overwhelming. By getting a clear picture of your company’s footprint, considering end-of-life strategies and partnering with like-minded suppliers, it is possible to implement practical solutions that are both accessible and scalable. Real change takes time, but there’s never a better time to start than right now.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2024/01/31/three-sustainability-strategies-even-the-busiest-ceo-can-commit-to/?sh=7189c4d44184


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Climate Change, corporate social responsibility, DEI, ESG, green marketing, lack of trust, reputation management, responsible brands, social responsibility, sustainability, sustainable branding, sustainable brands

3 Steps to Ensure Your Corporate Strategy Delivers Both Growth and Sustainability

10 02 2023

By Andreas von Buchwaldt, Grant Mitchell, Seth Reynolds, and Steve Varley from Harvard Business Review • Reposted: February 10, 2023

CEOs could once focus almost single-mindedly on their businesses and value chains. Now, along with driving a strategy that generates competitive advantage and enhanced value, they face another core task: satisfying a broad base of stakeholders with diverse interests who all demand sustainability policies and practices in different variations.

Delivering on both (often apparently conflicting) fronts is essential. Investors will only support a firm’s long-term strategic initiatives if they yield an above-market return and address the future needs of investors themselves, customers, regulators, and employees.

Like digital before it, sustainability has become an overarching strategic concern today. Judgments about a company’s sustainability performance affect talent acquisition and retention, access to capital, and consumer choices. And new regulations, such as the U.S. Inflation Reduction Act, are translating sustainability imperatives into economic shocks, notably in the energy sector. CEOs also see competitors growing and increasing customer loyalty through sustainability-linked products and services.

As a result, CEOs have largely accepted the need to embed sustainability in their strategies to create competitive advantage. But while existing frameworks describe the elements of a sustainable business, they rarely show how to get there.

At the intersection of sustainability and strategy, many companies adopt an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy. In doing so, they can be strongly influenced by the external focus on third-party ESG metrics, which are framed as a way of measuring a company’s performance in ESG.

ESG strategies, which often aim to improve key metrics in a way that a firm finds acceptable or manageable, have given many businesses a pragmatic start toward becoming more sustainable. However, as a path to a better strategy, they have drawbacks.

https://0d515e8af6a31c1f54db845abb0fc18c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

Managing to metrics isn’t the best way to deploy sustainability as a driver of competitive advantage and value, or to hasten meaningful improvements in environmental and social outcomes. Being still immature, metrics are far from comparable, rigorous, or transparent. And the evidence for a link between economic value and ESG ratings is modest. Investors support genuine gains in sustainability, but they won’t tolerate strategies that don’t deliver economic value. While stakeholders closely observe ESG metrics, financial performance remains much more important in corporate valuations.

Rather than focusing on ESG metrics, a more effective path to improving both financial value and sustainability performance is to integrate sustainability into the development and implementation of corporate strategy. In doing so, CEOs can ensure their strategy makes the most of the market, technology, customer, and regulatory trends created by sustainability imperatives.

CEOs can unite strategy with sustainability in three ways:

1. Adapt classic, CEO-level strategy questions by viewing them through a sustainability lens: “Is my purpose the best possible fit with competing stakeholder demands?” “As sustainability plays out in my industry, how should I position my strategy and portfolio for maximum advantage?” The collated responses should be tailored for individual business units or portfolio sectors.

2. Ensure strategic choices include sustainability imperatives by applying top-down and bottom-up analysis.

  • From the top down, ask, “How will increased sustainability modify or create new strategic drivers?” To test existing strategic themes, use such means as moving from climate scenarios that capture climate risk to embedding climate elements in strategy scenarios and tailoring customer research to test hypotheses about critical sustainability issues. Insights gained can indicate how industry ecosystems will evolve as sustainability grows in influence.
  • From the bottom up, ask, “Which specific sustainability concerns will our strategy need to accommodate?” To identify such concerns, CEOs could consider which issues are most significant for stakeholders—and so, how likely they are to create competitive advantage. Three interrelated qualifiers can help identify these: the future prominence for stakeholders; uniqueness of contribution; and size of business value, net investment. Careful analysis helps rank these issues.

3. Use common methods to assess investments in sustainability and commercial initiatives. Investments with negative value miss the opportunity to increase meaningful impact. While some investments with unclear links to value may be pragmatic to avoid reputational risk, they should phase out over time. Most organizations can do more to use data such as that on stakeholder attitudes and future economic impacts, and connections to estimate the business consequences of investment.

Organizations need to execute sustainability initiatives with the same rigor as traditional strategic activity. They need to anchor these initiatives in the ambition, resourcing plans, and incentives of all key decision makers—not isolate them within a sustainability team. CEOs will need to identify early the new internal business and impact data they need to measure the progress of key sustainability initiatives, as legacy systems may not capture such data.

https://0d515e8af6a31c1f54db845abb0fc18c.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-40/html/container.html

EY-Parthenon research shows that taking these steps can give meaningful sustainability actions greater prominence in a CEO’s long-term agenda and may lead to better outcomes—helping a business achieve both the financial means and investor support to create a more sustainable future. Read more about how corporate strategy can deliver both growth and sustainability here.

To see the original post, follow this link: https://hbr.org/sponsored/2023/02/3-steps-to-ensure-your-corporate-strategy-delivers-both-growth-and-sustainability


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : corporate social responsibility, reputation management

CEOs Know ‘Business-As-Usual’ Isn’t Working, But Many Are Too Tapped Out to Change

21 01 2023

Image credits: Marvin Meyer and Ryoji Iwata via Unsplash

Executives view climate change as both a short- and long-term threat, but most are failing to address it proactively, PwC CEO Survey shows. By Mary Mazzoni from Triplepundit.com • Reposted: January 21, 2023

We’ve heard it for years — “business-as-usual isn’t working” — and the annual PwC CEO Survey indicates executives are well aware. Nearly 40 percent of more than 4,000 responding global CEOs think their companies will no longer be economically viable in a decade if they continue down their current path. 

That’s a pretty big deal. Yet while one would think such a grim consensus would spur an immediate push for change, many executives told PwC they don’t have nearly enough time to think and talk about the future. Maintaining current operating performance consumed the biggest share of CEOs’ time last year, according to the survey, and executives admitted they’d rather spend more time evolving their companies’ strategies to meet future demands.

Findings like these reflect the “dual imperative” facing CEOs around the world as they look to reinvent their businesses for the future while  navigating a laundry list of daunting challenges in the present day, the PwC CEO Survey found. “If organizations are not only to thrive but survive the next few years, they must carefully balance the dual imperative of mitigating short-term risks and operational demands with long-term outcomes — as businesses that don’t transform, won’t be viable,” Bob Moritz, global chairman of PwC, said in a statement. 

So, will business leaders act to save themselves, or will they be too busy with next quarter’s P&L? Let’s take a closer look inside the survey to see what executives are saying — and what it could mean for the future. 

Executives view climate change as both a short- and long-term threat, but most are failing to address it proactively, PwC CEO Survey shows 

While managing climate risk is a long-term challenge that continues to vex executives, the PwC CEO Survey indicates many are also concerned about the effects of climate change in the here and now. 

Most of the CEOs surveyed expect their businesses to feel some degree of impact from climate change within the next 12 months. About half predict the effects of climate change will have a “moderate,” “large” or “very large” impact on their cost profiles. More than 40 percent anticipate impacts to their supply chains, while around a quarter are worried about climate-related damage to their physical assets.

Their concerns are warranted: The 10 most significant climate-related disasters to strike the world last year caused more than $3 billion worth of damage each, according to the World Economic Forum. 

Still, the way they respond could use some work. “Deeper statistical analysis of the survey shows that the CEOs who feel most exposed to climate change are more likely to take action to address it,” PwC researchers observed.

“This kind of reactive approach is understandable — when your house is in the path of a forest fire, you reach for the hose — but it creates risks of its own,” they continued. “Combating climate change requires a coordinated, long-term plan. It won’t be solved if the only companies working on it are those that face immediate financial impact.”

Beyond issues with reactivity, the researchers underscore that they “don’t know how much” the actions most often taken by businesses — such as decarbonization initiatives and moves to innovate more climate-friendly products and services — “will move the needle, particularly in the near-term, which, in light of emissions already in the atmosphere, promises continued warming under virtually every scenario.”

While it remains murky if business actions will do anything to curb their climate risk in the short term, the researchers warn that many long-term corporate climate strategies are also incomplete or less effective than they could be — setting the stage for even more serious risk in the years to come. 

More than half of all CEOs surveyed, including 70 percent of those at U.S. companies, say their teams have no plans to apply an internal carbon price to decision-making, “even though doing so could help them account for considerations like taxes and incentives, and clarify strategic trade-offs,” the researchers found. Many are also dropping the ball on reporting, as another recent PwC survey found that 87 percent of global investors think corporate reporting contains unsubstantiated sustainability claims, often referred to as “greenwashing.”

CEOs predict declining global economic growth, but is that really a bad thing? 

Nearly three-quarters (73 percent) of CEOs believe global economic growth will decline over the next 12 months. This is a marked departure from recent years, as more than 75 percent of respondents to the 2020 and 2021 iterations of the PwC CEO Survey said they thought economic growth would improve. It’s also the most pessimistic CEOs have been regarding global economic growth since the PwC CEO Survey began asking this question 12 years ago. 

This comes as no major shock, as other recent polling indicates CEOs around the world are bracing for a recession in 2023. Still, it begs a few questions: Is a slowdown in economic growth inevitable, and is it even a bad thing? 

In the decades since economist Milton Friedman declared that the social responsibility of business is to increase profits for shareholders, conventional reason has dictated that the ultimate marker of business health is to grow bigger and bigger every year, with solid shareholder returns that climb on a quarterly basis. 

Yet study after study indicates that the never-ending pursuit of more consumption, more profit and more money does not equate to better quality of life across the economy — and the spoils of rugged capitalism are not shared equally. In the U.S., for example, CEO pay has grown by a staggering 1,460 percent since 1978, while median worker pay has not even kept pace with inflation, increasing by a mere 18 percent over the same period. U.S. CEOs were paid 399 times as much as a typical worker in 2021. 

So, if the dogged pursuit of “more, more, more” does not increase quality of life for the many, and workers by and large find themselves more wage-poor than their parents were, who really benefits from eternal economic growth as a marker of success? Even businesses stand to lose out as CEOs cash their bloated paychecks while predicting their companies will be belly-up within a decade. 

Against a backdrop like this, it makes sense that conversations around degrowth are having a major moment in mainstream business circles. As the name implies, degrowth calls for intentional reductions in production and consumption to stay within the boundaries of a resource-constrained world — particularly in rich countries, allowing developing countries to have a greater share of the economic pie (and the global carbon budget). 

While respondents to the PwC CEO Survey stop far short of advocating for strategic degrowth, they don’t plan to cope with the impending recession in the way many might expect. While over half of responding CEOs say they are moving to cut operating costs and raise prices, the majority (60 percent) say they do not plan to reduce the size of their workforce in the next 12 months, and 80 percent say they have no plans to reduce compensation. 

Still, it makes sense that predictions about the worst recession in a century would be preoccupying for executives, but as Moritz of PwC observed, those that don’t keep the future in mind are destined for failure. This type of push and pull between long-term longevity and short-term profit is one that has defined conversations around stakeholder capitalism and corporate responsibility for as long as they’ve existed. Parsing through these survey responses, it could be that Mother Nature — and the markets — will finally force executives’ hands, pushing into fruition something that for decades was simply words. 

To see the original post, follow this link. https://www.triplepundit.com/story/2023/pwc-ceo-survey-2023/764296


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,
Categories : sustainable brands