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Why Corporate Sustainability Practices Must Start at the Top

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Global Trade Daily

Why Corporate Sustainability Practices Must Start at the Top

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Industrial manufacturers are some of the biggest contributors to pollution and climate change. Both industrial manufacturers and supply chain managers must bear a large part of the responsibility for reducing our environmental impact. While many factors have contributed to supply chain hurdles and economic woes, there are clear measures organizations can take to ensure progress toward more sustainable operations. Because there can be many hurdles on the way to meeting decarbonization goals, it helps to have multiple levers to pull and expectations to hold you accountable across various aspects of the business. Installing solar panels or recycling processed water alone won’t achieve your net-zero goals. Organizations must look at their entire operation – from supply chain to maintenance, manufacturing processes to administration – to identify decarbonization opportunities and ensure progress toward more sustainable operations. 

Importance of Internal Transparency

Raising awareness about the importance of sustainable operations and being outspoken about transparency and integrity is essential. Two-thirds of the world’s largest publicly traded companies have been vocal about how they plan to achieve their net-zero and sustainability goals outside of consumer-facing operations, but others still lack transparency as to how they plan to get there. When determining sustainability goals, remember the best plans flow from the top down. Committing to sustainability across your organization can help drive a culture shift whereby managers and supervisors begin thinking and acting with sustainability in mind. 

Some organizations even benefit from incentivizing these efforts, through executive compensation based on sustainable performance or programs that reward management and even production staff for their ideas and efforts toward sustainability. Shifting your culture toward sustainable operations can also help future-proof the organization. Keeping sustainability in mind when making equipment purchases and upgrade decisions can help you stay ahead of shifting mandates. For example, organizations might look at upgrading facility lighting to high-efficiency LED fixtures with future-ready capabilities, which can significantly lower energy consumption and carbon footprint at all facilities.

Promoting Cross-Functional Buy-In

Infusing sustainability KPIs into operations and decision-making will establish operational policies across your organization. One way to do this is to bring sustainability directors into management and purchasing decisions. With sustainability in mind, you can create consistent, well-documented policies, codes of conduct and processes to which all departments and business partners must adhere. No matter what you’re doing internally, working with suppliers who don’t meet modern sustainability standards holds back your net zero and corporate social responsibility progress. Establishing policies and expectations that suppliers must agree to in writing regarding safety record, waste management and greenhouse gas emissions helps ensure your entire supply chain is helping your company meet decarbonization and sustainability goals. Set operating agreements and separate performance metrics to follow up on, conduct regular audits and update your partners on any certifications you require. While some international companies may be reluctant to comply in the absence of governmental mandates, the tide is quickly turning in places like the UK and other European nations, who recently began pushing on due diligence proposals and forcing organizations to clean up their supply chain operations. When bigger, multinational companies with larger purchasing power begin enforcing these expectations, smaller organizations can demand the same standards. There is a bit of a follow-the-leader mentality in this endeavor, and by being the company in front of the issue, you can force the industry to catch up and have a say in the standards being established. As it turns out, competitive pressure is good for the environment.

Monitor Impact Regularly

It’s difficult to prove or prioritize sustainability when you are not able to consistently measure the results of your efforts. Using automated monitors for heavy industrial equipment or lighting control systems to track energy consumption can demonstrate quantifiable improvements in energy efficiency and carbon reduction. Having these metrics not only verifies the results of your efforts but can also help calculate ROI for the total cost of ownership over the up-front cost for investing in energy-efficient equipment. When you can show long-term benefit with empirical evidence, it turns a CapEx into an investment in long-value. Investing in energy efficient equipment and solutions will maintain and support your progress towards decarbonization so that you’re not constantly playing catch up.

Even for industries that are heavy emitters, such as oil and gas or even chemical manufacturing, for example— there are plenty of steps that can be taken to reduce your carbon footprint and any effort, big or small, can have a positive impact on the environment. By changing the organizational mindset from one of immediate gratification, ROI and cost-savings to one that prioritizes long-term investment, total cost of ownership and forward-thinking solutions, companies can make considerable and legitimate progress in their sustainability goals while also benefiting from higher-performing, longer-lasting products.

Author Bio

Fariyal Khanbabi is the CEO at Dialight, global leader in industrial LED lighting technology. Khanbabi brings over a decade of C-suite experience to her role, having formerly worked as CFO at Harvest Energy and Britannia Bulk, LTD. Having spent her entire career in the technology space, Khanbabi has become accustomed to being the only woman in the room and thus has proven to be a strong advocate for women in the workplace, especially in the LED industry.

 

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Global Trade Daily

How to Manage a Low-Stress Commercial Move

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Whether you’re moving between apartments, private homes, or commercial premises, one thing is almost guaranteed: moving comes with stressful moments. When it comes to business moves, streamlining the process is about more than keeping your family on track. You also need to ensure business continuity and avoid missing deadlines or losing critical orders. 

Aside from thorough planning and preparation, communication is key. For many businesses, professional help is a game-changer both in the run-up to and on moving day itself. Read on for detailed tips to help your company move without stress. 

Organize Your Current Office Space Before the Move

Organizing your current office space may seem like a waste, but a move is an excellent opportunity to re-order files, categorize products, and start preparing for your move. 

Especially if you have occupied your current premises for a long time, this is also a chance to declutter and decide what you need to keep and what can be archived or put into storage. Even if your business is moving to larger premises, it’s worth considering what to bring. Every office has items that no one in your team is using. Rather than allowing those things to use up space in your new premises, think about selling or donating them. 

Start preparing and organizing for your move as soon as possible. There is nothing worse than having to cram all your preparation into a day or two before your movers arrive. A lack of preparation on that scale can disrupt operations in a way that disrupts service delivery to your customers and could lose you business in the short and the long term.

Choose the Best Packing and Labeling Supplies and Strategies for a Smooth Move

Invest in professional packing and labeling supplies. If you’re working with a removal company, you can often negotiate the supply of packaging materials as part of your contract. 

And even if you choose to manage your office move in-house, without professional support, it’s worth choosing heavy-duty supplies that protect valuable equipment, products, merchandise, office supplies, and technology. As a minimum, you’ll need cardboard boxes, bubble wrap, packing tape, markers, and zip-lock bags for items that require special protection. 

Labeling your boxes effectively is just as important as choosing quality supplies. Think about what your labels need to achieve: as soon as you arrive at your new premises, these labels need to be clear enough to ensure everything ends up in the correct location. Not only that, but the labels should also help your team members set up their workstations without unnecessary delays. 

Communicating with Employees and Stakeholders

As soon as you have decided to move and found new premises, it’s time to talk to your employees and other stakeholders about the planned move. 

Employees may need time to make different arrangements for their commute and re-organize childcare. You may also want to consider offering options to work remotely or choose a hybrid working style. 

Who else needs to know about your office move? The answer depends on the nature of your business. If your office sees a lot of client traffic, alerting customers to your relocation is essential to ensure continuity. Most offices also receive regular deliveries, including office supplies, water, and other items. Alert suppliers as soon as you can to give them time to adjust their delivery routes.

If you’re managing a complex move or moving into newly built premises, timelines may change and either delay or accelerate your moving date. Keeping employees and other stakeholders informed about moving deadlines will help them adjust their own plans. 

Setting Up the New Office Space Efficiently

There are several elements to setting up your new office space efficiently. First, you want to ensure that essential services such as internet connections and phone lines are ready to use before you arrive at your new premises. Remember that ensuring continuity is essential for successful business moves. Spending even a few days without the ability to communicate smoothly could compromise your business goals. 

Second, don’t miss out on this opportunity to improve the overall setup of your office space. Copying your existing setup may seem like the easiest option, but ask yourself if there are improvements you’ve been meaning to make for a while. Changing desk arrangements can change team dynamics and reinvigorate your team. 

If you have team members who no longer work in the office every day, this move could be a chance to free up desk space and create a more flexible layout. 

Choosing a Professional Commercial Moving Company

Getting professional help for your move could be more effective, affordable, and beneficial than you think. All the tips to streamline and plan your move that we mention above take time. Even if you have a large team, chances are that your employees are already busy with their existing jobs. Asking them to plan and prepare a move is somewhat unfair, and it will most likely disrupt other tasks. 

Hiring a commercial moving company allows you to share some of the responsibilities with highly-skilled professionals who plan and organize office moves regularly. Commercial movers will bring a systematic approach to your move. 

These companies know exactly what to pack at what time and how to organize the transport of your possessions to minimize disruption and allow you and your team to concentrate on your business. 

Post-Move: Following Up and Ensuring Business Continuity

Even with the most detailed planning, you’ll need to allocate time after the move to follow up with customers, suppliers, and other stakeholders. Don’t hesitate to add reminders of your new address to your email signature, and use your website, social media channels, and other regular communications to ensure all relevant parties know about your move.

Lastly, prepare for a little snagging. No matter how detailed your communications plan is, some customers will come to your old location, and the odd delivery may be delayed. Working with a  professional moving company can help minimize those issues and help you have a low-stress business move. 

 

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Global Trade Daily

The Impact of Cultural Diversity on Company Growth

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Growth is essential for any business venture. This is why companies continue to discover and develop new strategies for their business growth. But we often downplay the importance of having a culturally diverse workplace as a potent tool for a company’s growth. Cultural diversity allows for a synergy of experts with various opinions, views, and ideas that can help to move a company forward. In this article, you will learn about the impact of cultural diversity on company growth:

  1. Inspires creativity and innovation:

With technological developments being introduced recurrently, innovations are becoming the new normal. Cultural diversity in the workplace helps to improve innovative processes because each employee has a different value to contribute to the process. The idea to create something new and different from scratch may come from just one team member, but the ideas from other members will help produce the best results. A company accommodating cultural diversity among its employees will likely have more innovations.

2. Improves productivity and performance:

Your company’s productivity can immensely increase if you have employees from diverse cultural groups. Being from different cultural backgrounds means that they will see things from different perspectives. Applying these diverse ideas to your business can help improve its performance, mainly because you accept its ideas. This will encourage them to do better by reaching new markets and ultimately increase your company’s profits.

3. Enhances decision-making process:

Sometimes, your company’s decision can give it a lifetime of positive reinvention. Having a team of diverse employees or business partners can help you make better and well-informed decisions. When you are stuck in the middle of trying to use a new business strategy for your company, a team of diverse people can help you with the planning and execution. They may even add better ideas to the already formulated strategy, which will lead to positive results that will benefit your company.

4. Helps the company to attract and retain the best talents:

A company that accommodates cultural diversity will have its recruitment process easy. This is because they will attract the best talents for the job and eventually retain ambitious and globally-minded people. Various research has shown that job hunters are more likely to notice the company when you stand out because of its multicultural and inclusive working environment.

5. Enables your company to serve a diverse audience:

A company that has a culturally diverse talent pool will be able to quickly offer a broader and more versatile range of products and services, primarily if they are globally oriented. You can easily leverage the skills and abilities of their diverse employees to offer more products that benefit their customers on a global level. They can easily detect gaps in the market and look for effective ways to solve such problems.

6. Higher employee engagement and reduced turnover:

Diverse companies are more likely to engage better employees with their jobs because they feel included in the system. As a company, one good way to help your diverse employees feel more productive and engaged is to organize online events where you can use simultaneous translation equipment such as FM transmitters, FM receivers, interpreter control units, etc., to bridge the language barrier. This will significantly improve employee retention and reduce employee turnover because satisfied employees feel respected and are less likely to leave their job. Employee engagement results in more productive employees and, ultimately higher profits for the company.

7. Gives your company a better reputation:

Because the world keeps evolving, issues of ethnicity, gender, religion, and race are taken very seriously. A company that embraces and accommodates diverse employees is seen as a socially responsible organization and will have more people willing to invest in the company because of its reputation. It also places such companies above its competitors. 

Dedicated employees or partners can help your company grow, but a culturally diverse work environment does the trick better. When your company accommodates individuals from different cultural backgrounds, ethnic groups, gender, and religion, there is bound to be a unification of diverse opinions and ideas that will help your company develop faster.

 

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How Your Organization Can Meet Ambitious Sustainability Goals in 2023

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C-suite leaders are looking toward one goal in 2023 — making their businesses more sustainable. Over 160 Fortune 500 companies in 23 countries have pledged to meet climate targets, but achieving long-term results requires ambitious sustainability goals.

Anyone in a leadership position can consider implementing these strategies to make their company greener by the end of the year. They’ll chart a path forward while minimizing a brand’s carbon footprint, so every business has a place in the fight against global warming.

1. Invest in Analytics

No one can make progress if they don’t know where they started. Leaders intent on meeting ambitious sustainability goals in 2023 must invest in analytics to understand what their company currently does that is or isn’t eco-friendly.

The data should include where the company stands on issues like water waste, carbon dioxide emissions and other forms of pollution. Asking questions is a helpful way to start, such as:

  • How green are the executive office branches?
  • Are production facilities putting the environment first?
  • Are partnered suppliers also going green?

Gathering this information into one document will show everyone what needs work most. It will also chart the way forward, given that the data serves as a future point of reflection when judging the quarter or year’s progress.

2. Look Into Collaboration

Creating a positive environmental impact can come with a steep learning curve. Many companies make more progress by collaborating with existing businesses or nonprofit organizations already known for going green.

A brand that makes beach supplies for tourists could announce a partnership with a volunteer organization that directs beach cleanup efforts. It would create opportunities for collaborative brainstorming in addition to positive marketing campaigns with sustainably minded consumers who already follow or respect the volunteer organization.

Additionally, companies could immediately direct portions of their profits to gain a greater global outreach. While working on business-centric changes, the donations would begin making a positive difference for the environment in the corporation’s name.

3. Make Small Adjustments

It may feel tempting to plan sweeping organizational changes to make a company more sustainable, but minor adjustments help the planet, too. It also demonstrates the C-suite’s dedication to the environment by involving them personally.

The manager at the executive office could install a smart thermostat. It would adjust the building’s temperature automatically based on ongoing factors like opening the front door, closing windows and how many people are in a room at any given time. Other options, like partnering with a recycling pickup company or switching styrofoam coffee cups with biodegradable alternatives, would help the company get started on sustainable progress.

It may also save money. A recent study found that hand dryers cost less long term than restocking paper towels. Efforts to cut waste also reduce how much a company spends on daily office necessities.

4. Study Green Competitors

Understanding how industry competitors have gone green is another way for organizations to meet ambitious sustainability goals. Executive leaders can study the changes in real-time and replicate successes without trial and error.

It’s essential to note how competitors went green by reading their eco-friendly mission statements and any announcements about partnerships. Those key details carve a path forward, but they also call to consumers.

Research shows that helping the environment is a primary motivator for consumers purchasing products from new brands. Companies who learn from and outdo their competitors in assisting the planet will win over more customers. Those shoppers are more likely to remain loyal since eco-friendly changes within the company will remain ongoing.

5. Write a Climate Pledge

Companies write mission statements to outline what they stand for and what they hope to do for their customers. People read them to know what they should hold organizations accountable for, including helping the environment.

Every executive hoping to make their company go green should write a climate pledge. The final draft posted on the company website will set realistic, ambitious sustainability goals and make them known. It’s much easier to turn plans into realities when consumers and employees understand what the brand is working toward.

6. Get Everyone Involved

Executive-office employees can get more involved with eco-friendly goals set by their company. They may enjoy feeling like they’re making a difference with their jobs and stay with their employer long term.

Once a month, the team could enjoy a company-sponsored vegetarian lunch. While listening to an officewide presentation, they’d avoid eating meat that requires natural resources at high production quantities to reach consumers. 

They could also use electricity-saving computers, LEB bulbs in office light fixtures and a low-flow faucet in the kitchen sink. Every small change involving more employees will create a team atmosphere that energizes people toward the company’s sustainability goals.

7. Remain Ready to Learn

Progress only happens when people are open to learning. Experts in environmental fields frequently publish new information regarding the successes and failures of current efforts to improve the environment. They may also find new challenges to overcome.

After setting and working toward eco-friendly goals, executives should keep an open mind to the continually updating world of sustainability. Books and articles from environmental leaders could reveal new problems that require solutions or encouraging news about ongoing efforts. 

Employees and consumers should also provide feedback. They’ll feel personally involved and engaged, leading to more effort spent on making green progress. Each input source will refine the organization’s goals so continual efforts become the new normal long after 2023 ends.

8. Determine Metrics for Sustainability Successes

It’s much more challenging to gauge success without predetermined metrics. Those standards will change in each organization because companies have different environmental goals.

Metrics could include pounds of waste recycled compared to last year or kilowatts saved over a month. The outline should also name the company’s primary sustainability goal, like only producing 500 pounds of waste from the executive office in a quarter due to new recycling efforts.

Benchmarking progress with frequent updates is an essential part of achieving any goal. Leaders can schedule recurring meetings to ensure the company stays on track.

Meet Ambitious Sustainability Goals in 2023

More companies are going green because consumers seek eco-friendly brands and products. Setting and meeting ambitious sustainability goals are possible if organizations use strategies like these in 2023. They’ll create viable paths forward with meaningful change, no matter what objectives the leadership team sets.