Last week Professor called me to check if I was free to join him to attend a meeting at a Corporate on Sustainability. The Chief Sustainability Officer (CSO) had prepared an elaborate presentation that described Company’s sustainability initiatives, achievements of various targets in comparison with the peers and the impact created across its various external stakeholders. The story was really impressive.
The meeting conducted was also great in optics. There were no plastic water bottles on the desks, food was vegan, and the waste generated was channelized to certified recyclers. The CSO ended his presentation with a slide on the net GHG emissions estimated due to the meeting and accordingly showed the pledge made by the Company to plant trees in a forest on hills of western ghats as an offset. Later during the conversations, the Chairman was extremely pleased to know that me and Professor drove in electric cars and had opted to climb two staircases instead of using the elevators.
When the presentation ended, Chairman asked Professor about his suggestions to improve company’s sustainability performance even further. His ambition was to get his company featured at the World Economic Forum (now this is not so difficult if you have the right connections!) and be on the list of sustainability stewards inspiring the world.
I thought that given all the good work ongoing, the company certainly deserved such a recognition. In answering Chairman’s question however, Professor was very brief and said that the company should go beyond sustainability related metrics and make efforts to build sustainability maturity of the of the organization. I could see that many in the conference room were not very clear when Professor used the term sustainability maturity.
When we were returning, I praised the company’s well designed corporate sustainability report. It had all the right words, fonts, pictures and of course the graphs and tables. The preface to the report was humbly written expressing the company’s sustainability vision and mission.
Professor looked outside the window and said “Dr Modak, all this looks fine to me, but I don’t know how mature is sustainability at this company as an organization. I would have been interested to know the sustainability literacy level of the company. And when I say company or an organization, I mean not just the direct employees but also the “ecosystem” consisting of the suppliers, distributors and the customers.”
I knew that external reporting and disclosures on the sustainability performance alone does not reflect the true sustainability maturity of the organization. Often sustainability related efforts are a result due to regulators, investors, peers and in some cases even personal ambitions of the leadership. The whole facade looked rather “inorganic” to me. And what did Professor mean when he used the term sustainability literacy. I was curious to know.
Let us understand what we mean by sustainability maturity of an organization.
Sustainability maturity is the level of (systematic) integration of sustainability practices into its purpose, strategy, operations, systems, processes, procurement and partner and supplier engagements.
Various attempts have been made to measure sustainability maturity of the corporate world. Examples include PWC’s ‘Four Profiles of ESG Maturity’ , ‘Sustainability model developed by Sari et al , PWC and Ecochain, and EY’s SM Assessment
For folks who hate unnecessary sophistication of the Big 4s and the likes, please read my old post ‘Four Tiers of Sustainability’ that captures the essence of the sustainability maturity models.
Generally, sustainability maturity is judged basis of external reporting by reviewing documentation that follow formats such as Global Reporting Initiative, SASB, CDP, TCFD, Integrated Reporting, IFRS – S1 etc. Unfortunately, such an assessment can be deceiving as Board room does not always reflect the organization and the CSO and his/her consultants often do the magic of a deceptive sustainability maturity.
While there have been attempts to “grade” the sustainability maturity of a company, consideration to organization wide sustainability literacy is invariably missed. But what is sustainability literacy?
Professor wanted to add his views on internal communication on sustainability. To him this was equally important compared to external communication on sustainability.
I logged in my ChatGPT account and the engine spewed out following text
“Unilever has embedded its Sustainable Living Plan into its corporate culture, encouraging employees to contribute ideas and take part in sustainability projects. They use internal campaigns, training sessions, and regular updates on sustainability goals to ensure everyone in the organization understands and participates in these efforts. Patagonia encourages employees to engage in sustainability initiatives. They use workshops, internal newsletters, and sustainability-driven employee programs to reinforce their commitment to environmental stewardship. Siemens provides training and resources to employees to help them understand their role in achieving sustainability targets. Through workshops, seminars, and internal platforms, Siemens ensures that sustainability is a core part of its business and employee culture. IKEA focuses on sustainability across its operations and engages employees through its “People & Planet Positive” strategy. This inward communication fosters a culture of sustainability that aligns with the company’s broader goals”.
I showed this text to Professor that there are great examples of internal communication on sustainability. So what these companies are green washers of different kinds! I saw that Professor was not impressed.
We had by then reached my office. Professor lighted his cigar and I pushed the sphinx headed ash tray in front of him. Clearly, he was in a mood of some disruptive thinking today!
He said
“Unfortunately, the scope of internal communication is limited to direct employees and excludes suppliers, distributors and customers. The internal sustainability communication does not have a purpose or direction or a metric to understand how good it has been. Idea of sustainability communication should also include improving “sustainability literacy”. Generally, this is neither understood nor appreciated.
“Sustainability Literacy” is defined as the knowledge, skills and mindsets that help compel an individual to become deeply committed to building a sustainable future and allow him or her to make informed and effective decisions to this end. The company in its commitment and journey towards sustainability should make a plan to raise the sustainability literacy of the organization’s ecosystem.
There are tests developed to assess sustainability literacy. Under the efforts to reach Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), UN has developed a Sustainability Literacy Test (SULITEST) with leadership of the Higher Education Sustainability Initiative (HESI). The Sustainability Literacy test (SULITEST) is an online multiple choice question assessment. It assesses, in 30 minutes, the minimum level of knowledge in economic, social and environmental responsibility.
Professor continued.
“We cannot use such generic sustainability literacy test if we want to assess sustainable maturity of the organization. The test should cover questions on challenges facing society and the planet i.e. general knowledge on social, environmental and economic issues, basic understanding of the earth e.g. water and carbon cycles, greenhouse effect, etc. In addition questions on the organization’s responsibility in general and on corporate responsibility developed based on organizations materiality assessment, disclosures with progress made and commitments.
The test should assess the awareness and knowledge on sustainability concepts, then assess the sensitivity of employees toward sustainability issues and finally motivate on commitment to sustainability related actions , thereby helping the business and boosting cooperation and partnerships. The questions could be randomized as well as customized based on position, functional role and relationship to the organization. I would even add the test should take cognizance of persons culture as traditions do embed principles of sustainability.”
“That is extremely complex Professor.” I exclaimed. “ This can in fact be an exciting application of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI)”.
I could see that if such a test is conducted, the Sustainability literacy of the “organization” can be established, tracked and reported based on (weighted) average of the literacy scores. Sustainability literacy of the organization can be assessed at departmental level, over supply chain, distributors and customers. The organization may set aside part of its CSR budget to improve the sustainability literacy of the stakeholders.
You can now ask for sustainability literacy reports across business functions, across organization’s hierarchy, identify top three performing departments and laggards. And yes, you can set up an e-learning platform to help the organization’s ecosystem to address the gaps and keep improving organizations sustainability literacy. When reported annually on the progress made, the sustainability reports won’t remain that drab as they often are found to be, and the “organic” impact of the organization will be much more appreciated. The investors will assess the organization’s sustainability maturity now on a more realistic basis and see the improvement in the sustainability literacy at the time of exit!
The professor extinguished his cigar and smiled. I understood that our meeting had ended.
Friends, doesn’t this sound exciting?
Join me if you want to work on this project with me and have an opportunity to meet my Professor Friend.
Cover image taken from https://www.testingtime.com/en/blog/6-degrees-ux-maturity-scale/