What you will find
Managing a company is about managing people, and so business success is greatly determined by how the organization is helping its employees thrive.
The correlation is rather simple, when people thrive, business can thrive as well, and thus human sustainability enters the equation.
People have in the last decades become the most important asset for companies. Human interactions, that being of employees, consumers or providers with the organization is what ultimately defines value creation.
Human sustainability is the idea businesses need to follow through and act upon in order to make sure they are prioritizing and taking good care of such interactions.
What is human sustainability?
Human sustainability, in a nutshell, is about preparing people for sustainability. This is, in order to advance ESG strategic matters, specially social ones, company leaders should put their efforts on creating value for people as human beings.
The idea behind this is that people can have greater health and wellbeing, better and stronger skills, job opportunities professional progress and personal growth, all of which are things companies can greatly benefit from.
We can even dare to say equity, diversity and inclusion in the workplace stem precisely from this idea of putting people at the centre of business, not solely as employees but rather as human beings.
Engage employees in the sustainability strategy
A company that takes human sustainability as a basic premise in the way they do business, understands that focusing on how the organization can benefit people is just as important as understanding how people can benefit company goals.
Human sustainability is overall a beneficial cycle for all parties involved, because improving human outcomes enhances corporate outcomes, and vice versa.
Implementing a human sustainability perspective
Organizations that take a human sustainability stand are more likely to see better company results, including better engagement and diversity metrics, or significantly lower employee turnover numbers.
Let’s take a look at some of the many ways in which company leaders can start implementing a human sustainability outlook into their business practices.
- Measure human outcomes not just initiatives: Fairly often companies focus on measuring the number of initiatives they do surrounding DEI, or focus on how they are ticking in the boxes of regulatory requirements, but such information is rarely insightful enough. Instead, company leaders should focus on measuring actual outcomes, like for example skills development and the employability of them, societal wellbeing etc.
- Build the right mindset and business case for human sustainability: For any new stand or perspective to set into the entirety of the company it is crucial for leaders, managers or board members to be on the same page and actually understand the benefits human sustainability can bring. Chances are your company is already working on human sustainability initiatives, it is just a matter of connecting the dots and understanding how they are being beneficial and how to continue improving such metrics.
- Incentivize human sustainability achievements: Easy as it sounds, tying rewards to business managers’ efforts regarding human sustainability initiatives and outcomes is a great way to incentivize and hold leaders accountable. Furthermore, it is a very widely spread practice among companies to drive sustainability progress and achieve goals faster.
- Engage people in the conversation: How can companies know what is valuable to individuals if they do not ask them directly? In this regard, we suggest companies should involve employees, potential candidates, and a variety of stakeholders into a two way conversation where people and organizations, and their respective needs, can be acknowledged.
Transforming sustainability into an employee benefit
Engage 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.
