What you will find
Company purpose can set two competitors apart quite rapidly, which, in business value creation terms, can determine which one gets the necessary competitive advantage to stay ahead in the market, and sustainability has a lot to do with it.
In today’s market terms, sustainability is the ultimate purpose and value creation element inside any and every organization. However, how the latter is capitalized is what truly determines a company’s success on the matter.
If a company merely just looks at sustainability as a compliance matter, there is little to no room for making it shine through corporate purpose and strategy.
So the question here is how can purpose driven companies create business value through sustainability? Let’s take a look.
What sets purpose driven companies apart?
The first thing we need to consider is why businesses should aim to become a purpose driven company, as well as understand what actually sets these type of companies apart from other market peers and competitors.
We could define a purpose driven company as one that works in a way and towards specific objectives that help society and the planet address current challenges. But most importantly, is one that takes this very premise and applies it across the organization.
In other words, purpose driven companies embed this idea of benefiting society and the planet into every single activity or practices within the organization, and it is not only an added aspect of their work, but rather the way they choose to grow their business.
Engage employees in the sustianability strategy
Creating business value through sustainability
In their journey towards corporate sustainability, companies often take one of three very specific approaches, but, in our humble opinion, only one can truly and consistently help create sustainable business value.
3 approaches to sustainable value creation
On the one hand there are those who choose the compliance route. Of course, most, if not all companies, have sustainability due diligence responsibilities that they need to work through, but this one dimensional approach to sustainability won’t take you far.
It will help address immediate concerns, but we do think is a mistake to understand sustainability as a mere necessity to avoid reputational risks, as it won’t lead to hardly any meaningful value creation.
On the other hand, a second approach many organizations lean towards to is taking in sustainability as a project in each own. This normally translates into one company department taking the lead on the matter and working on different initiatives approved by top management.
Although it seems like a friendlier and more genuine way to take on the challenge of sustainable value creation, it is just a partial solution with a high risks of being accused of greenwashing or ingenuous practices.
This approach understands sustainability matters as a separate element, which, although can bring meaningful actions forward, it does not bring value into the purpose of the company itself.
Last but not least, we have our favorite option, and that is embedded sustainability. This approach understands sustainability as something that needs to be embedded into the core strategy of the business.
The embedded approach integrates sustainability at every level of the organization and every decision making process, making it not only a matter of legal compliance or isolated activities, but rather a method for doing business.
The benefits of this are endless, as it allows value creation to naturally be sustainable, as well as putting innovation at the centre of every company activity.
Engaging employees in the sustainability strategy
In DoGood, we aim to simplify the complex web of sustainability objectives for companies by offering a platform that translates the high-level ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) objectives into actionable tasks for every single employee.
Then, each employee not only knows how to make an impact but also feels empowered to contribute meaningfully to the greater sustainable strategy.
No more vague directives. No confusion. DoGood automates the process, making it seamless for the workforce to know precisely what steps to take.
