Sustainability is everyone’s responsibility and has become a critical aspect of strategy and operations for all organisations, irrespective of their purpose, size or industry.
Overview
In the context of a business, sustainability is about adopting strategies and practices that support the creation of long-term value whilst balancing their Environmental, Social and Economic responsibilities – often referred to as the 3 Pillars of Sustainability: Planet, People and Profit.
The key challenge for all organisations, irrespective of their size or industry, is how to continue to grow and improve their performance in a way that is sustainable and has a positive impact on Planet, People and Profit.
For many businesses, their sustainability initiatives are encapsulated within their Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) commitments. The performance of a business in relation to ESG criteria is becoming a key factor for potential investors – and increasingly, prospects and customers.
Closely related to ESG are the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs). The 17 UN SDG’s form a global agenda to address the world’s most pressing environmental, social and economic challenges by 2030.
The relationship between the UN SDGs and ESG is one of mutual reinforcement. While the SDGs provide the goals and vision for a sustainable future, ESG provides a practical framework for businesses to contribute to these goals. Together, they guide businesses in not only being profitable but also being instrumental in achieving broader global sustainability objectives.
Our approach
At Brand Experiences, our work with clients has always been about making a difference and our people are attracted to work here because they want to do purposeful work that has a real impact. So when we came together to discuss sustainability, it quickly became clear that we needed to identify where we could have the biggest possible positive impact.
As a relatively small business, it was obvious that just focusing on our own sustainability footprint would only take us so far. However, if we used our collective knowledge and experience to help our clients accelerate the achievement of their own sustainability targets we could punch well above our weight and deliver a significant impact – particularly around ‘People Sustainability’ which also impacts sustainable business growth and profitability.
We have used our unique understanding of both customer and employee experience (CX and EX) to create a number of initiatives and solutions that organisations can adopt as part of their sustainability and ESG objectives:
The Human Energy Transition
While there is already a vast array of resources and support for the sustainability of the planet, our particular expertise is focused on delivering sustainability of people, and subsequently profit. Organisations are constantly looking to improve performance and grow the business, but how they achieve this is key when it comes to sustainability. It is simply not sustainable or ethical to keep pushing employees to do more and more – particularly when employee wellbeing is at an all-time low.
We need a new approach, which provides a more sustainable path to growth and prosperity. We believe that if organisations transition their employee motivation strategies from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation, this will release the energy within their employees to be more productive.
ESG
When it comes to helping clients with their Environmental, Social and Governance objectives, we are firmly committed to improving the Social impact of businesses, specifically around the prosperity and wellbeing of their employees and their wider communities.
UN SDG’s
We have identified 4 of the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals where we can have the biggest impact with our clients:
- UN SDG3 Good Health & Wellbeing
- UN SDG8 Decent Work and Economic Growth
- UN SDG9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- UN SDG17 Partnerships for the Goals
5 x 30
In support of our people sustainability agenda and the UN SDG’s, 5 x 30 is our mission to improve the lives of 5million employees by the year 2030. To achieve this goal, we will need to focus on where we can have the biggest impact.
The Employee eXperience Opportunity (EXO)
As part of our mission to give EX parity with CX, we have released a number of free resources including The EXO Toolkit, EXO Survey Results and The EXO ROI Calculator. Our Founder & CEO, Mike Sharples and EX Director, Nicholas Wardle have also published a book titled ‘Monetising the Employee Experience’ to help people professionals understand, and then demonstrate, the ROI for investing in their people.
Mojo – the employee motivation platform
Underpinning our sustainability offering to clients is our mojo platform, which taps into the intrinsic motivations of employees to improve employee wellbeing and resilience and unlock the path to sustainable productivity growth.
