Implementing a sustainability strategy: Practical tips and stumbling blocks

Implementing a sustainability strategy is often even more complex than with other strategies. Ideally, more stakeholders need to be involved and the range of problem areas to be addressed is usually more diverse. In addition, social, political and natural conditions are currently changing very quickly. Therefore, the sustainability strategy must also be adaptive in its implementation.

In this article, we have summarised some of our experiences of implementing a sustainability strategy and described typical stumbling blocks.

An overview of all sustainability strategy topics can be found in our Comprehensive guide to sustainability strategy.

1. success factors for implementation

When implementing a sustainability strategy, necessary changes occur time and again. If the following factors are kept in mind, as in good project management, implementation will be much easier.

We believe it is important to understand that sustainable development is a dynamic process. With each step, new insights will come to light. And these should be taken into account in the further implementation of the sustainability strategy. However, this should not be seen as an endeavour, but as a process in which new paths are constantly opening up constructively with a great deal of curiosity and conviction.

Resources

What human and financial resources have been planned for the implementation of the strategy? How will the resources required for the individual focus topics and areas change? It is then necessary to adapt the measures so that, for example, the goal can still be achieved despite fewer resources.

Systems and processes

What fixed or informal processes take place in the company? Which systems already exist in the company? These can be management systems, communication systems or other systems. The implementation of the sustainability strategy should utilise existing systems and processes whenever possible. This is because setting up new structures will usually lead to "frictional losses".

Participation

The implementation of a sustainability strategy often depends on it being supported by as many employees as possible. In the course of the process, it is therefore important to reflect again and again on how implementation can be placed even more strongly in the hands of many. In this way, they make it "their sustainability" and a permanent anchoring is ensured.

In addition, a wide range of external stakeholders can be involved. On the one hand, this strengthens the legitimisation of the sustainability strategy. On the other hand, the expertise and requirements are integrated in such a way that the strategy can become even more effective.

Corporate culture

What is the corporate culture in the organisation? Sustainability is a wide-ranging topic and will therefore have many points of contact with the corporate culture. In many small or even larger processes, it is necessary to negotiate which aspects of Corporate culture Sustainability can utilise for its success. But also where the corporate culture may hinder sustainability.

Role models

Experience and research show that change processes depend on company management acting as a role model. In addition to measures to implement the sustainability strategy, attention must also be paid to ensuring that management itself takes on tasks or implements changes.

Endurance

Especially if sustainability is a relatively new topic for a company, it will take a long time for everyone to get to grips with it. Setbacks and difficulties will often have to be accepted. This is why it helps to create processes or a culture that constantly motivates those implementing the programme and encourages them to persevere.

2. anchoring sustainability in the organisation

In order to effectively promote sustainability within the organisation, it needs to be firmly anchored. This is highly dependent on the organisational structure and the status of sustainability performance. A brief insight into possible instruments and structures for anchoring:

• A CSR or sustainability officer or a sustainability working group
• A dedicated CSR or sustainability department
• Definition of responsibility in the Executive Board or management
• Establishing a sustainability council or a separate position on the advisory board
• Obligation to publish an annual sustainability report
• Technical and methodological training of organisational members in sustainable management
• Linking bonuses and other incentives to climate targets
• Control elements such as internal CO2 tax
• Strong communication of sustainability goals and thus the development of a public and internal commitment
• Self-commitment via "pledges" and mergers of companies

3. develop sustainability measures

Develop sustainability measures for the company's sustainability strategy

Once the goals of the sustainability strategy are clear, measures are needed to achieve them. To do this, it is helpful to have already set the goals at various levels. Both company-wide measures and specific measures for departments can then be devised.

On the one hand, the identification of measures should involve as many different employees as possible in order to gather their expertise. On the other hand, it is enormously helpful to work together with other companies, experts and all other stakeholders. This allows various options to be devised as to how the goals can be achieved.

We should also consider the time frame in which the ideas for measures should be developed. For special topics Intensive workshop formats deliver excellent results. For other topics, a month's time should be allowed. And for still other topics, solutions may only be found once other measures have been started and the findings from them provide new ideas.

We believe that quality is crucial in the development of sustainability measures: the following quote expresses this well.

"We have to learn to be able to sit on problems of sustainability. If we are aware of our responsibility, it will hurt not to have a solution to the problem. But if it hurts long enough, we will have taken the problem into enough mental contexts. And we will eventually find a solution in one of these contexts."

The important quality is patience and conviction. We cannot expect to quickly find simple answers to such complex sustainability issues. However, with patience and conviction, the right approach and tools, we will be able to find solutions and measures.

Putting together packages of measures

Once sustainability measures have been identified and the most promising ones have been selected, it may help to summarise them in packages of measures. The development of a sustainability strategy for large companies in particular becomes much more effective if the many measures are bundled together.

This can be done by bundling measures by department or topic and distributing responsibilities. Another option is to summarise measures in larger initiatives that run through the entire company. This creates a framework and combines various measures. They are then seen as a joint effort. This allows the employees implementing the measures to identify more strongly with them.

4. distribute responsibilities for implementing the sustainability strategy well

In addition to the general anchoring of sustainability, the implementation of the sustainability strategy in particular also requires anchored responsibilities. A clear structure of sustainability goals means that these responsibilities can already be well defined at every level of the company. It is particularly important that the company management is involved in the responsibilities in order to be able to act as a role model.

When allocating responsibilities, it helps enormously to think about how the strategy is to be implemented later on. It is extremely important to consider how the company is structured.

• Do decisions take place top-down or are bottom-up processes favoured?
• What other strategies does the developed sustainability strategy interfere with and how can they be dovetailed?
• Which people are motivated and can be recruited as "ambassadors" or even "sustainable change agents"?
• Who will accompany the implementation and provide support in the event of uncertainties or conflicting objectives?

4. sustainability controlling from the outset

Good sustainability controlling is essential if a company really wants to become more sustainable. With a sustainability strategy, companies should therefore also establish sustainability controlling and start collecting information and making adjustments at an early stage.

The fundamental aim of sustainability controlling is to be able to provide information on all three dimensions of sustainability: Society, ecology and economy. Economic information can already be found in "classic controlling". Nevertheless, it can be particularly exciting to scrutinise what new economic information is added when the ecological and social effects are considered more closely. In particular, the collection and management of environmental and social information is new for many companies. Here, too, expertise needs to be built up over time in order to understand which data is relevant for what.

Special features of sustainability controlling and the sustainability balanced scorecard

An important special feature of sustainability controlling is that the impact should always be kept in mind. Many data such as resource consumption, minimum wages, etc. only provide indirect information about the extent of the impact on ecosystems or good working conditions. Sustainability controllers must therefore regularly scrutinise whether the impact is well represented by the available data.

A common instrument for sustainability controlling is the Sustainability Balanced Scorecard. This is from the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) according to Kaplan and Norton derived. In addition to the four conventional economic aspects, it now also includes ecological and social aspects. The ecological and social aspects can be

• either be incorporated into each of the four conventional aspects,
• be included as a separate extended perspective or
• form its own balanced scorecard.

The objectives of sustainability controlling therefore include

• Managing the improvement of the impact on the environment and society.
• Managing the impact of sustainability activities on corporate success.
• Gain a better understanding of the interrelationships between individual aspects of sustainability.
• Gain a better understanding of the company's relationships with social, environmental and economic stakeholders.
• Keeping an eye on and promoting those processes that are built around sustainability issues.

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5. communicative support for more effective implementation of the sustainability strategy

An important factor in implementing the sustainability strategy is the right communication. This can run in two directions:

• Internal company communication for better implementation of the sustainability strategy.
• External communication in order to obtain added corporate value from sustainability efforts.
• External communication to involve stakeholders and improve implementation.

Internal corporate sustainability communication

Good communication within the company ensures that employees are aware of the sustainability goals and measures. Only then can they identify with them in the first place and thus participate in their implementation. Internal sustainability communication can work at various levels:

• Inform stakeholders about their responsibilities with regard to sustainability.
• To get employees to realise the relevance of sustainability for the company.
• Involve those involved in the continuous search for solutions.
• Generating motivation for sustainability and sustainability a topic of conversation within the company.
• Generate motivation for the process and progress.

External sustainability communication

Externally, good communication can reinforce the implementation of the sustainability strategy by generating added business value. Sustainability communication can contribute to various objectives:

• image building,
• employer attractiveness,
• to attract new customer groups,
• for the identification of new suppliers or
• for differentiation from competitors.

However, all of this can only be realised if the communication is truly authentic.

On the other hand, sustainability communication can be used to involve indirect stakeholders such as fans, industry associations, NGOs, governments or completely different actors.

A sustainability communication campaign

Both internal and external communication can be integrated into existing communication. For many companies, however, it also makes sense to set up their own long-term campaign for sustainability efforts. The aim here is to emphasise sustainability, but also to increase identification with these efforts. Bold "company goes green" campaigns have long since given way to this. Today's campaigns are characterised by authenticity and tangibility.

Sustainability communication campaigns can therefore pursue various objectives:

• Provide clear communication and orientation on the complex topic of sustainability.
• Provide a contact point for employees and external parties for queries and ideas.
• identification with the sustainability strategy, regardless of the company's "sustainability past".
• Enable clearer responsibilities for sustainability communication and thus also more standardised communication.
• Transparent and authentic communication on sustainability issues is easier if it is separated from other (e.g. sales) communications. Authentic communication is a core success factor for sustainability communication.
• Establish honesty and communicate where there are still construction sites and where you are looking for solutions. This creates trust, allies and authenticity.

6. expanding knowledge and expertise for sustainability

We have already written about this in various places: Sustainability can only be implemented effectively if as many employees as possible are involved. To do this, they need elementary qualities:

1. You must be motivated. Sustainability must be an important and ideally fulfilling topic for them.
2. You must be able to. They need knowledge about sustainability in general and about ways to implement it.

Both motivation and ability can be achieved through knowledge transfer. The field of "Education for Sustainable Development" (ESD) has been growing for several years and there are always new methods for imparting knowledge.

Basically, the more employees gain knowledge about sustainability, the better the sustainability strategy can be implemented. Each company should decide individually which form of knowledge transfer is the right one. The options are as follows:

• Sustainability training courses and seminars
• Micro-learning and online learning programmes on sustainability
• Promotion of employee involvement in sustainability initiatives
• Internal dialogue rounds on sustainability (greenbag sessions based on the brownbag sessions)
• Exchange rounds with other companies
• Further training or extra-occupational studies on sustainability for employees

Promoting knowledge and expertise among suppliers and partners

Companies often face particular difficulties when they are unable to find sustainable suppliers or other partners. Or when good relationships with existing partners are to be maintained, but these have little to do with sustainability. For many companies, the best way was to motivate and empower these partners to become more sustainable.

VAUDE reported that it was important for them to actively train suppliers and support them in implementing sustainability more strongly.

7. prepare the update of the sustainability strategy

With the implementation of the sustainability strategy, the company should simultaneously begin preparations for the update. New findings and experience will be available for the development of the subsequent sustainability strategy. These form the basis for well-founded decisions.

In particular, however, parallel to implementation, consideration should be given to how the next strategy can be even more well-founded. What figures, trends and analyses should it be based on? Companies often lack a solid data basis for developing an effective sustainability strategy. Creating a detailed carbon footprint, for example, can be the ideal data basis for a climate strategy. It is just as important to establish a close relationship with stakeholders in order to involve them in the development of the upcoming strategy.

8. stumbling blocks in the implementation of a sustainability strategy

In the course of the projects, we have collected typical stumbling blocks in the implementation of sustainability strategies. Here is the list of the most common hurdles.

1. The employees find No identification with the sustainability strategy and it comes "out of the blue" for them.
2. The employees do not know about their tasks with regard to the sustainability strategy and have no orientation.
3. The employees Lack of (methodological and technical) knowledge to implement the sustainability strategy.
4. The Management does not live the sustainability goals and makes the strategy so inauthentic.
5. The Communication focusses only on successeswithout addressing hurdles. It therefore runs the risk of appearing inauthentic or even greenwashing.
6. The customers and others Stakeholders are not consulted and they don't know where the commitment to sustainability comes from.
7. The Sustainability progress is not measured. In this way, neither a goal alignment can take place nor the motivation to continue can be increased.
8. It is used generically to a wide variety of sustainability topics worked. Instead, the topics with the greatest impact should be clearly identified.
9. The Sustainability goals are not ambitious enough and the efforts are not perceived as serious.
10. Conflicting objectives have not been resolved and there is no time available to complete the tasks, for example.

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