500 senior executives of the UK’s largest companies where asked in this survey commissioned by telecoms company O2 and produced by consultancy The Future Laboratory what the current situation in UK boardrooms with regards to Sustainability is like.
The survey concluded that despite remaining on the agenda, sustainability is losing out to the demand for short term profits in the boardroom.
This is the link to the O2 report: The O2 Report and coverage of the report in the Guardian Newspaper: Guardian Article
Some more input:
This is an interesting quote from the report to give you more context: Ben Dowd, O2 Business Sales Director, said: “Our report reveals that success and sustainability go together, but UK executives are facing serious barriers to pushing it up the agenda. With budgets under ever increasing scrutiny, sustainability will only gain real traction in Britain when boardrooms have the tools to prove its commercial benefit.
Harnessing state of the art technology is the answer with energy monitoring, and expert consultancy just some of the ways that can give British boardrooms the confidence they need to make sustainability part of their profit improvement plans.”
My Opinion:
I think the quote from the O2 sales director says a lot. Pushing Sustainability up the companies agenda as a whole is proving to be very difficult. Especially in these difficult economic times. For me the most important aspect of the problem is very clear: Business Case, Business Case and Business Case.
Without the business case there is not much more we as Sustainability professionals can do to raise the awareness with business to adopt a more responsible business approach you might think. But I think this is the wrong way of tackling this topic of the business case.
The times are changing and so should the quest for the business case
All of this talk about the business case is not new, not by any means. But there is a different feel about this in my opinion to for example 12 months ago.
I feel that these economic times can and are something of a catalyst for change towards a more responsible business practice that is driven from inside the business and not so much determined by external pressures. With this I mean a change that pushes us beyond always looking for the overall business case and realizing that the business case is something each company needs to find for itself and in its own time.
The business case is not something you can buy or find from one day to the other. It is something that each organization needs to discover and individualize towards its business needs. Once a company is willing to do this I believe it will be able to find their business case for Sustainability.
Finding the business case is not rocket science. What it needs is commitment from the inside, the willingness to think outside of the box and most importantly time to be understood from an employee perspective. Once a company is following these simple principles I believe each company will be able to determine their individual business.
This is what I think will work. But what do you think about this? Let me know and Iets have a good discussion about it.
Picture Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ricardo/9681639/sizes/s/