Clearly communicating your sustainability vision and milestones motivates teams, aligns priorities, and drives ongoing operational improvements. We can help you effectively engage both internal and external stakeholders as you set, share, and achieve your environmental goals.
How We Can Help
Sustainability Visioning, Goal-Setting, & Planning
Our team can provide customized visioning sessions, help you identify and articulate sustainability goals aligned with your organizational values, and develop effective plans for sustainable change and progress tracking.
Establishing Regional & Global Context
We can help connect your programs to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, national sustainability targets (e.g., the food waste reduction goal identified by the USDA and U.S. EPA), relevant current or pending state legislation, and current events to illustrate recognition of your organization’s place within broader systems and assist with internal planning and prioritization of initiatives.
Inventorying Your Sustainability Efforts
Organizations sometimes focus on environmental aspects of sustainability, without recognizing economic and social facets which may relate to previous or ongoing activities. Functional silos or inadequate interdepartmental communication can lead to underestimating sustainability initiatives and success. We can help you characterize the full extent of existing efforts and past accomplishments to establish an accurate baseline for measuring future progress.
Employee Training & Engagement
From recommending and/or implementing activities that involve your staff in organizational efforts to developing and delivering customized presentations or educational materials to raise awareness and sustainability literacy among employees, we can help ensure sustainability is part of everyone’s mindset and responsibility.
Sustainability Reporting
We can help you identify and/or create effective, appropriate ways to share your sustainability story with internal and external stakeholders, based on your situation, desired audience, and our experience with clients of various sizes across sectors. Reporting can take many forms and be relatively simple (e.g., newsletter pieces, intranet content, case studies, press releases, social media campaigns, signage on progress for staff) or complex (e.g., formal sustainability reports following your own format or a globally recognized framework). Our team will help you navigate the possibilities.
Benefits of Sharing Your Sustainability Story
- Customer perception and loyalty—for yourself and your partners. Customers appreciate learning about your sustainability efforts and those in your supply chain because it gives them confidence that using your products or services aligns with their values.
- Media attention. Proactively sharing your vision, successes, and challenges can attract media attention and raise awareness of your organization without spending funds on advertising.
- Workplace satisfaction. Understanding organizational sustainability goals and efforts can instill pride among employees, even if they’re not directly involved, potentially increasing job satisfaction.
- Recruiting new talent. New recruits may be drawn to your organization if your sustainability journey aligns with their personal one.
- Increasing buy-in and creating a “culture of sustainability.” When internal stakeholders are well informed and can comment on and contribute to sustainability goals and efforts, they are more likely to feel part of the solution, rather than having change imposed on them “from above.” Consistent communication with staff helps integrate sustainability into your collective identity.
- Tapping the creativity of internal stakeholders. The more your employees know about organizational goals and progress, the better they can apply their unique perspectives and expertise to overcome challenges during implementation.
- Tapping the creativity of external stakeholders. Your transparency can create new opportunities for collaboration and partnership with other organizations.
- Positive perceptions of potential funders and investors. Sharing information about your past, current, and planned efforts can strengthen applications to funding agencies and attract investor interest.
- Inspiring peers. Effective communication to external stakeholders can build your reputation as a leader in your sector and further support sustainability by inspiring your peers to emulate your efforts.