Embedding sustainability in your organizational culture

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Sustainability has become an increasingly integral part of doing business in any industry. As organizations work through these changes, business leaders are starting to recognize that organizational culture plays a fundamental part in the shift toward sustainability. Despite corporate sustainability reports that describe sustainability as ‘the way we do business,’ most business leaders lack a clear understanding of how to embed sustainability in their day-today decisions and processes.According to the UN Global Compact Progress Report 2019, 99% of CEOs from large companies agree that sustainabilityissues are important to the future success of their businesses. Yet, only 48% of companies say they are implementing sustainability into their operations. Consumers and employees are key drivers of change and will have the greatest impact in the way companies manage sustainability in the upcoming 5 years according to CEO’s interviewed. But how can you embed sustainability into the company culture? Which practices are most effective?`

With great pleasure we introduce to you the ‘culture scan’** which will help you identify gaps in your current program and implement new practices to integrate sustainability into the DNA of your organization. There are two different sustainability goals: fulfillment and innovation. On the path to sustainability, organizations often face tensions between ensuring they meet existing sustainability commitments (fulfillment) and making way for changes that will help them improve their sustainability performance in the long run (innovation).Moreover, there are two approaches on how to achieve this: informal and formal. There is an ongoing interplay between these two approaches and both impact culture. Managers should be aware of the existence and impact of both ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ approaches to building culture.Based on 59 distinct practices we guide organizations and help them to identify the gaps so they will be able to fully embed sustainability into the company culture. 

Please reach out to Ulrike de Jong if you want to know more about this proposition: ulrike@toscatribe.nl