Who is taking the lead on Sustainability?

With Australia’s 2030 emission reduction target steadily approaching, businesses are increasingly cognisant of the need to establish solid sustainability leadership and evaluate how sustainability best fits into their business in order to meet these targets.

Mainstream corporate sustainability is a relatively new business function that comes with a unique and complex set of challenges. Our recent conversations with business leaders illustrate the variety of thoughts about how to structure sustainability and where it should sit around the leadership table. While there are common themes, central to the successful execution of sustainability must be the belief that people are the key to the solution.

The issue of where to house sustainability in a business is the first point to consider, with leaders reinforcing the fact that there really is no “right” place for it to fit in an organisation. Sustainability can be found either in the People & Culture function, the Health, Safety & Environment, or the Compliance/Legal/General Counsel functions. Sometimes organisations build out sustainability to be its own function, placing it in the C-suite to give it a clear strategic seat at the leadership table.

The challenge when it comes to sustainability however is that it needs to fit in with the size, scale, complexity and resources of the individual business and often the leadership of the business determines the role sustainability will take. There is no one size fits all strategy as in truth, sustainability belongs everywhere. Not since the emergence of the CTO/CIO in the 1990s has there been a function that needs to impact across the whole organisation as much as sustainability. There needs to be critical thinking around how a business fosters and integrates sustainability, along with a dedicated owner of the space.

Businesses therefore must invest in the right leadership, capable of the critical thinking needed to solve these issues. Not only does this talent need to do the heavy lifting to figure out the best customised plan of action for the business, they also need to be able to inspire and influence their peers along the sustainability journey.

The way a business achieves buy-in varies from bringing in external consultants, to appointing an existing executive leader to stretch themselves into this area, to hiring someone for 3-5 years who specialises in ushering in this change. Incentivising parts of the business by linking KPIs and bonus structures to achieving sustainability targets, can also be an intrinsic way to affect change.

When leadership structure and buy-in is in place, the focus shifts to the rest of the workforce by first upskilling and re-skilling existing talent and then attracting new talent to operationalise the strategy. With competition for good sustainability talent fierce and next-generation leaders focussed on working with values-driven businesses, a strong sustainability culture is a key aspect of enticing and retaining this talent across the broader business.

Once the workforce is in place, keeping them engaged on the issue of sustainability is easier if you can find ways to build momentum quickly. Identify “fast adopters” within the business to foster peer-to-peer buy-in and spot “easy wins” to help give people a quick sense of achievement. These incremental steps add up quickly to achieve bigger targets and help keep motivation high.

Overall, we are encouraged by the novel thinking and urgency we are seeing within organisations addressing sustainability challenges, and the senior leaders who are stretching themselves to drive this priority.

It’s important to recognise that sustainability is not cut and dry. Success in this nuanced area can’t be achieved by one team’s efforts alone. It needs to be the responsibility of the entire business. Having the right people and culture in place to bolster an organisation’s sustainability efforts is key to encouraging ownership across the business. Ultimately, what matters the most is that organisations are focusing on sustainability, no matter where it sits because the emission reduction target deadline isn’t moving. We are rushing towards it.