From back of the drawer to Real Impact: Activating Your Sustainability Strategy
From back of the drawer to Real Impact: Activating Your Sustainability Strategy
In a time where sustainability issues are becoming increasingly central to the success and survival of businesses (thank God!), unfortunately few manage to translate their sustainability strategies into concrete actions that make a real difference. The primary obstacle is neither lack of good intentions nor understanding the importance of steering their operations towards more sustainable business models. Rather, the challenge lies in the actual change management; implementation and activation, moving from words to action.
The organizational challenges are confirmed by data we continuously gather when we lecture or meet with clients. The question we ask is: “What are your biggest challenges right now regarding your sustainability work?”. Regardless of the target audience or when we ask the question, the result is almost always the same: The biggest challenges do not lie in understanding the importance of developing roadmaps, plans, and strategies. Instead, the challenges lie in the organizational conditions to actually implement these strategies and plans. The internal implementation and involvement are insufficient, and the incentives are often nonexistent.
Many transformation strategies end up in the back of a drawer because of a lack of internal ownership, mandate, deeper engagement, and clarity on the how. Or, because all long-term work comes to a halt at the slightest hint of trouble. A common scenario is that the entire company’s transformation work ends up on the shoulders of an often lonely sustainability manager, who struggles to generate interest and commitment from the rest of the organization. For many companies, this means that the sustainability strategy remains an ambitious document that unfortunately does not receive the attention and resources required to be realized.
So, how do you build a strategy that doesn’t collect dust?
- Agree on why you want to work with sustainability. The answer to that question usually leads to both clear choices and an expressed level of ambition. And if the ambitions are set at a sufficiently high level (i.e., in line with what research says is needed), sustainability issues need to become part of the core business and be followed up and managed accordingly. Otherwise, they will be deprioritized as soon as temporary setbacks occur.
- Ensure that the management is on board. The CEO and management team must lead the way by clearly understanding and buying into the purpose and integrating sustainability work into the company’s overall goals and vision. It is also crucial that this is reflected in the company’s internal processes and structures, from decision-making to reward systems.
- Anchor it throughout the organization. If you succeed with both points above, you have come a long way. Then the issues cannot lie solely on a lone sustainability manager, but the ownership is everyone’s. It requires anchoring throughout the organization to succeed, where every individual, regardless of position, understands their unique contribution and responsibility to drive the change forward. Make sure to involve employees, who in many ways are the ones who will implement the strategy, to understand their why and what the transition entails concretely in their tasks. Communicate, educate, engage, and listen.
- Follow up, evaluate, and learn. Finally, to ensure that the sustainability strategy is not just an item on the agenda but a living part of the company’s DNA, regular follow-ups and evaluations are needed. This includes measuring progress towards set sustainability goals and openly communicating these progressions, both internally and externally. By highlighting successes and learning from failures, a culture of continuous improvement and innovation is encouraged.
Activating a sustainability strategy is about bridging the gap between vision and reality. When you succeed in doing that, you contribute not only to a more sustainable world but also create a stronger, more attractive, and competitive business model for the future.
Carl-Johan Schultz & Mikael Botnen Diamant
Dela inlägget
Pay Equity Analysis – A Tedious Necessity or an Untapped Source for Strategic Business Development?
Pay Equity Analysis – A Tedious Necessity or an Untapped Source for Strategic Business Development?
Regardless of how we relate to pay equity analysis, there are many arguments for conducting them: Strengthening gender equality efforts is one, as it is a legal requirement that will soon be intensified by new EU legislation. But how do we ensure that the work creates real value to the organization
Salary Transparency and New EU Directives
Equal pay for equal work has been a statutory right in Sweden for over 60 years. Since January 2017, all employers in Sweden are required to continuously both map and analyze the wage differences within the organization regarding gender. If the employer has more than ten employees, the work must also be documented.
The purpose of pay equity analysis is to ensure that the organization’s salaries are gender equal. The requirements are also intensified in the European Union the coming years with the introduction of the so-called pay transparency directive. This means clearer transparency and measures concerning fair wage setting, tougher requirements, and burden of proof for the employer, and including the rights of non-binary individuals.
The goal of the requirement for pay equity analysis and the new EU directive is the same; equal pay for equal or equivalent work, regardless of gender. And once and for all, to close the wage gap between women and men, which still lingers at an average of 13% – somewhat lower in Sweden. Unfortunately, this figure has not decreased significantly over the past ten years.
Check-the-box or Strategic Business Development?
So, what purpose does pay equity analysis serve if the wage gap still exists? In many organizations, unfortunately, it largely comes down to just checking off the legal requirement. This often means mapping and analyzing wage differences between genders, where each member of the management team argues and defends “their employees”. Perhaps reactively addressing any unfair differences. Or worst-case scenario, finding loopholes to defend them…
Organizations that instead work to create value with the pay equity analysis, use them to make strategic decisions. These decisions provide directions on how to reward desired performance. With this approach, structured dialogues can be created around expectations for assignments, efforts, responsibilities, and shared development forward. And ultimately, results on the bottom line!
Untapped Potential
There is enormous untapped potential in the work of pay equity analysis, we believe. As a management team, taking the opportunity to create consensus on what defines good performance, what expectations and demands you have for specific roles, and how much you are willing to invest in different roles and areas is obvious.
But it is also an excellent opportunity to establish how you, as an employer, ensure strategic competence supply, where the development of roles, demands for new roles and competencies are advancing rapidly. Do you have consensus on how you want to prioritize the work of developing your employees internally vs. constantly struggling to find “new talents” outside your own organization? How do you ensure that you have a learning organization that is equipped for the constant competence development required?
Support for the Business Strategy
Harnessing the power of illuminating the structural choices we make to reward certain roles and individuals in certain ways should be one of the most fundamental business strategies. Just as much as agreeing on why we have a certain pricing strategy towards our customers.
By consciously working strategically and systematically with these topics, you as an employer and organization ensure both your attractiveness and competitiveness going forward.
If you chose to see pay equity analysis as an essential part of your business development, this will provide you with the compass both for how to ensure sustainable performance and results, both today and tomorrow!
Are you interested in learning more about how we at Doings work with strategic salary setting and competence supply, do not hesitate to contact us.
Lena Noaksson