Rising trend: Sustainability buzz draws business attention

Awareness among leading organisations of social responsibility increasing

KARACHI: In a competitive world, businesses are constantly required to evolve, companies need to develop a unique selling point in order to stay ahead and thrive. In this spirit, increasing emphasis is paid to developing an effective sustainability department.

An apparent example of this is the World Economic Forum (WEF) and how it seems abuzz with pressing issues from the sustainability agenda.

From the ‘Trust or Bust?’ convention at the WEF held in East Asia last month to the ‘Inclusive Growth in the Digital Age’ session at Davos earlier this year, sustainability is the talk of the global business community.

A decade ago, who would have thought that the WEF would confer ‘Social Entrepreneur of the Year’ awards?

In the ‘Trust or Bust?’ session, for example, leaders ranging from the world’s largest soft drinks maker to the Indonesian fisheries’ minister explored how trust could be strengthened at the intersection of business and society.

The theme inherently implied that a bit of a trust deficit exists and thereby a latent reputation risk and brand bankruptcy may be a side effect.

The powerfully moderated discussion set out to re-examine value chains, a favorite topic under the sustainability umbrella. A close-second is the subject of inclusive growth via value creation for local communities.

Additionally, the session also set out to discuss investing for longer-term impact versus the frequent funding of board member’s friends hobby-fests. The session also looked to abolish those conferences that fail to attract purpose and are a means of pushing sponsorship funds down a black hole.

Instead of being written off under the PR or marketing or other nebulous banners, these sponsorships often come from ‘social investment’ budgets.

To add to the irony, companies do not even try to measure the return on investment (ROI) of these expenditures. Ignorance is likely to be bliss in this case. (Please stop smirking, hospitality industry. With every event your hotels help host, your ROIs are as crystal clear as your glittering chandeliers.)

But we digress. The whole point of sustainability is to have a more wholesome, more holistic ROI measuring-capacity. This perhaps makes the lack of measuring any kind of ROI still more ironic.

Introducing Sustainability

Like it’s synonymous cousin, corporate social responsibility or CSR, is anchored around the triple bottom-line concept: An organisation measures its success around the 3Ps: prosperity – including the kind that comes from profits; people, all internal and external stakeholders along the entire value chain; and of course planet the one we’d like to leave healing and healthy for future generations.

Imagine a world where businesses measure their ROI, their success, based on their impact on all stakeholders, on prosperity for all stakeholders - and a minimised environmental footprint. Imagine players in an agri-based economy like Pakistan’s including metrics such as ‘percent of hari (farmer) income improved’ in their KPIs (Key Progress Indicators).

Imagine businesses stepping out of their comfort zone to charter new (semi-feudal) territory to invest in the core technical skills of small farmers. These farmers constitute crucial yet often-sidelined players in their own value chains. By investing in uplifting these harvesters’ near-destitute conditions, they find new doors and markets opening for their finished products too.

Pakistanis – companies and businessmen – rank high in their generous philanthropy. And no doubt, every national context, every regional context – every context – has issues that companies need to step in to resolve. And Pakistani companies have time and again proven their commitment to do so: whether it’s to support the dire need for primary education in Pakistan or rural healthcare or livelihoods and much more.



And with perspectives as well-rounded as the triple bottom-line, it’s not hard to see, and measure, the positive impact such efforts have, especially for the benefactor.

CEOs are beginning to agree 

A UN Global Compact and Accenture study of 766 CEOs worldwide showed that almost 94% said that sustainability should be “fully embedded in strategies and operations”. And this was half a decade ago, in June 2010.

These global CEOs knew the link between sustainability and key business soft-spots – the sync between their walk and talk. Around 72% invest in sustainability because of its direct impact on brand and reputation and of course customer loyalty.

Revenue growth and the inevitable cost-reduction came second at 44%. And more than 30% know that sustainable business practices are a key driver for recruiting, engaging and retaining the best talent.

Where does your company stand on the Sustainability journey?

Whether you can afford to sing your own praises at WEF or not, this more inclusive model will soon be your only competitive advantage – and the source of your organisation’s innovation.

The writer is a sustainability consultant and has won both the CNN and CSR Europe Young Journalist Awards

Published in The Express Tribune, May 4^th,  2015.

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