Sustainability strategy – then what? Establishing a program of measures to achieve sustainability goals – Part 1

Categories: sustainabilityPublished On: 13.07.2021

One look at the business press is enough to see that more and more companies are focusing their attention on sustainability – ambitious strategies for climate neutrality intersect with employee diversity goals and modern workplace models. But which steps are important to turn sustainability strategies and visions into measurable and effective results in the foreseeable future?

As experts in strategy implementation, we support our clients in implementing sustainability programs with our holistic approach acondas IMPACT. This approach follows three successive process steps: (1) derive goals & define key performance indicators, (2) analyze and implement measures, and (3) monitor measures and impact.

(1) The first challenge companies face at the start of the implementation process is to quantify their sustainability targets. Hard financial indicators such as earnings, sales or costs are complemented by more difficult-to-measure targets such as employee satisfaction or CO2 neutrality. Following standardized frameworks, we support our clients in defining and quantifying these goals, as well as breaking them down by location, department, and each individual employee. Once the targets are linked to measurable performance indicators, ongoing target/actual comparison of result contribution is possible.

(2) The measure analysis and implementation phase is characterized by the inherent challenges of sustainability programs: The long implementation period in a volatile and dynamic stakeholder environment requires flexible adaptation of the measures. Our agile acondas IMPACT approach enables our clients to identify internal project dependencies and conflicting goals quickly and to adapt measures promptly as needed. Using methods and tools from agile project management, we establish a project framework that delivers the appropriate approach to measure identification and measure implementation in a complex sustainability environment.

(3) The final step in the implementation process is effective and targeted controlling to track the progress of implementation and the impact of the sustainability measures. Only well-tracked target contributions demonstrate the successful transformation of sustainability strategies into real results. With acondas IMPACT, we build the bridge to the derived goals and controllable key figures in the first process step: The effect of sustainability measures often only becomes apparent in the long term, so suitable key figures are required that depict the target contribution comprehensibly over the long implementation period and illustrate project progress transparently and consistently. Contributions to results and implementation progress can then be incorporated into external sustainability reporting.

In addition to stringent management of the implementation process, overarching project and change management play a decisive role: In the next article, you will learn how company sustainability and its communication are anchored in a cross-process-step framework.

If you have any questions about our acondas IMPACT approach, please do not hesitate to contact us: info@acondas.com

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