Part 7/13 of the Business Sustainability in Nigeria Series with Adiya Atuluku and Jennifer Uchendu
How do you create a culture of anything? First, you talk about it a lot, then you integrate it into your daily lifestyle and then you make it a law.
Same thing with Sustainability really, a business has to first believe in what they are going into or practicing as the case may be, and by aligning their operations, products and people to think sustainably, ethically and responsibly, they are able to make it a standing code of practice, it becomes embedded in their vision and mission and so new and old recruits are able to run with the culture.
There is no doubt that building a strong culture within a team is at the core of business success, but building a sustainability culture within an organisation goes beyond business success, it means changing the mindset of your biggest resource – your people, and even changing the way they live outside of the office.
Notice that we have not attempted to define the word culture. The definition of culture is a black pit we don’t want to go into, because there are so many of them, depending on the scholar or organization. Let is suffice to say that when we mean culture here, we mean the way an organization does things.
Let’s make it practical now. We’ve put together a list of suggestions about how to build a sustainability culture. With this list, we have aimed to touch on what we see as the elements of culture (the things we look out for if we want to understand how an organization does things). These elements include, at the very least, a value system, communication, decision making, and processes and procedures.
Our suggestions are certainly not exhaustive, and you can get as creative as you want during this process.
Employ people who already think sustainably so that you have a good value fit for the company. What’s more, your sustainability mindset should be clearly evident in the way you recruit. You could:
- Employ from your host community whenever possible – potential employment is one of the easiest ways a business contributes positively to its host community, so you should actively promote this.
- Post your job adverts in sustainability magazines or/and newsletters, like CSRWire (international) and of course, Susty Vibes (national) and CSR-in-Action.
- Actively give potential employees equal opportunity and focus to diversity. You should get creative in the recruitment process to remove potential biases and barriers.
Train your staff on sustainability and include sustainability in performance appraisals so that people gain awareness and are prompted to put that awareness to good use. You can:
- Include sustainability training in your induction sessions.
- Train old staff on sustainability issues that are pertinent to the business.
- Make trainings and meetings as low carbon as possible by having conferencing facilities and approving a smaller travel budget.
- Set sustainability goals for employees.
- Performance appraisals should reflect the importance of sustainability practices by including these set sustainability goals. And managers should be held accountable for employees meeting set sustainability goals.
How decisions are made says a lot about how ingrained sustainability thinking will be in the organization. For example, you can:
- Assess your potential investments and projects, not just with a profit criterion, but with social and environmental criteria also…every time. It will help to have a set methodology and process that anyone can follow to carry out such an assessment.
- Involve your stakeholders and consider their needs before making a decision. It will help to have a stakeholder register that is constantly being updated to keep note of everyone.
Always communicate sustainability to ingrains it into the people’s minds, and even their subconscious. You can:
- Talk about sustainability on your website, brochures, social media and other marketing materials.
- Talk about sustainability on your intranet and other internal communication.
- Encourage fun team bonding activities around sustainability, e.g . Interdepartmental competitions to plant the most trees within a time frame, raise the most money for a cause, etc.
- As a leader in the organization, talk about sustainability in your speeches and other communication, but make sure your actions fit with your talk.
Set and enforce policies that further your sustainability initiatives and get your employees to change their behaviors at work and even at home too. You can:
- Have a cap for how much each employee can print, and install technology that can monitor this.
- Implement some telecommuting (perhaps as a perk for high performance) so that staff can work from home.
- Reduce your carbon emissions by including renewable sources of energy for your energy requirements
- Remind staff to put off lights and equipment when not in use, or better yet, install technology that improves energy efficiency – motion sensored lights, energy saving bulbs, equipment put in sleep mode, etc.
- Install operational health and safety measures and equipment (even things like being thoughtful about chairs that don’t hurt your back to providing appropriate equipment like gloves and overalls).
- Recycle your waste
- Fit your office for easy access for the disabled.
- Have a standard code of ethics that everyone knows…and follow it, with consequences for those who breach it
As you work on building a culture of sustainability, you should note that this takes time! It doesn’t happen overnight, and because of this, consistency is key!
This does take a lot of commitment though – we’re talking time and money. And justifying the financial resources that go into these activities is usually a challenge. That’s why, in the next article, we will be talking about how to finance sustainability.
About the Authors:
Adiya Atuluku is passionate about helping businesses be more sustainable, and she uses her experiences in both environmental and management consulting to achieve this. She is also a believer in the role of technology and good project management in helping achieve sustainability strategies.
Jennifer Uchendu is the founder of SustyVibes and a sustainability analyst with experience working on and pioneering projects for sustainability in indigenous and multi-national organisations in Nigeria, she has a passion for helping businesses practice sustainability in the ways that best fit their size, operations and budget.