What are the three main steps for a sustainable business?
According to the United Nations, there are six main areas that will guide you to improving your impact as a sustainable business.
This blog will take you through the three main areas and how this can become a part of the considerations you make when you are building strategies for sustainable business practices within your own company.
The three main pillars of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs) incorporate the 17 goals set in 2015 you can read more if you follow the link to their website.
Don’t forget, this is a collaborative blog space, so it you are working to build your sustainable business strategy share your story with the Business Space members to inspire other business leaders in the West Midlands.
Economic Viability
As business leaders, it is important that you have a clear picture of your company’s finances, but it is vital that this picture includes a clear vision of how the financial landscape and forecasts are going to impact on your staff. The emotions involved when strategies are set in place affect people’s motivation, and they also ripple through people’s lives.
Your company can build its approach to sustainable working practices by combining an understanding of finances with the understanding of the real-life implications for your team. Enabling the team to be part of solutions, to understand the decisions being made by the organisation and to feel empowered to respond within their professional roles is a great step to take.
This will impact on motivation and therefore productivity and will support the success of your team with any financial strategies put in place.
The implications may also reach your customers. It is important to use your marketing to be clear to your clients where the value lies in investment in your product or service. Use your market research and marketing team to explore the responses to the way you are communicating with your audience, finding ways to prove your value for money.
Environmental Protection
The growing awareness around working in an environmentally friendly way has been growing over the last few decades.
However, with more attention being drawn to climate change and the urgent need for action, we are certainly at a point where each individual needs to be addressing the way we live our lives and the impact this has on the planet.
As business owners, we need to be building this into our business strategies. Investing in renewable energy, saving energy, reducing waste and recycling where possible.
Working remotely, finding ways of enabling each member of your team to consider their own contribution to take action as a global citizen, as well as part of the team in your organisation. These are just some of the steps you can be taking as business leaders to make a real difference.
Having the time to reflect and look for solutions, using the collaborative blog for inspiration from other business owners and sharing your progress to support other west midlands business owners to work in more sustainable ways.
Every change we make, makes a difference.
Social Equity
Social Injustices rumble away underneath the interactions of everyday life.
Unconscious bias, microaggressions and traditional ways of talking or being are difficult to challenge.
The work has to start with the individual. As a business owner, it has to start with you.
Reading, talking and exploring by listening to the lived experience of people with experiences of life outside your own. This is the beginning of social change through better understanding.
Once you have begun the journey, you will find yourself needing to extend this process to the team you lead.
It is a culture shift, a long and careful process, but by taking small steps and planting the seeds of change, you will breed understanding and empathy of the lived experiences of people across the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.
The social and moral responsibilities of business leadership are important to your team and increasingly more important to your customers. Your values and ethos, your missions and your goals are all a part of your company’s identity. Building sustainability into your business strategies is a key responsibility for the future of innovative business as we continue to strive for social equity.
How can I get involved in the Business Space Collaborative Blog?
Your membership allows you to share an unlimited number of Blogs to the collaborative Business Space Blog.
You can see what other Business Space members are writing about from their industry perspective and pick up some ideas from how other business owners are working towards the sustainable development goals and other approaches to sustainable working in business.
The Business Space blog is a place for West Midland business owners to work collaboratively and share good practice as we all work for more ethical and mindful ways of working to build a sustainable way of working for future generations.
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