🎞 Watch the Episode
Find this episode on Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | iHeart
• Laura Gitman and Alex discussed Laura's work as Chief Impact Officer at BSR, promoting sustainability and justice in the global economy, and the importance of sustainability in business.
• Alex and Laura discussed the importance of companies aligning their actions with their stated goals and values, particularly in terms of sustainability and the possibility of profitability and sustainability coexisting.
• Laura and Alex discussed the importance of collaboration and innovation in sustainability communications, making content more digestible, searchable, practical, and shareable, and focusing on more interactive and problem-solving formats for events.
• Alex and Laura discussed the importance of understanding the impact of environmental, social, and governance factors across an organization and its supply chain and the need for impact reports to bring about change.
Sustainability and Justice in the Global Economy
Alex and Laura discussed the work of Laura's organization in promoting sustainability and justice in the global economy. Laura explained that the organization works directly with large businesses, providing thought leadership, advice, and opportunities for networking and collaboration. She emphasized the importance of embedding sustainability principles in all aspects of business, regardless of the individual's job title or function, and highlighted the need to consider both environmental and social impacts.
Sustainability and Profitability: A Balancing Act
Alex and Laura discussed the importance of companies aligning their actions with their stated goals and values, particularly in terms of sustainability. Laura emphasized that profitability and sustainability can coexist and should not be seen as a trade-off. She also highlighted the need for companies to prioritize areas where they can make the most impact. Alex praised Salesforce as a successful example of a company that has managed to do good while doing business. Laura also pointed out that while many companies have set ambitious sustainability targets, they often struggle to meet them due to continued growth and increasing emissions. She views this as an opportunity for companies to reimagine capitalism and industry to collectively achieve a sustainable future.
Sustainability Communications: Collaboration, Innovation, Impact
Laura and Alex discussed the importance of collaboration and innovation in sustainability communications. Laura expressed her desire for her organization to be a thought leader and to share best practices and guidance in a more engaging and digital way. They acknowledged the need to make content more digestible, searchable, practical, and shareable to have a wider impact. They also talked about their evolving approach to events, focusing on more interactive and problem-solving formats.
ESG Impact: Communicating for Change
Alex and Laura discussed the importance of understanding the impact of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors across an organization and its supply chain. Alex emphasized that impact reports alone are not enough to bring about change and stressed the need to communicate the message broadly. Laura acknowledged the challenge of tailoring messages to different audiences and industries but highlighted the value of specific and practical content. They agreed that thought leadership should be both broad and specific, providing a framework and drilling down into particular domains.
Sustainability Transformation Challenges
Laura and Alex discussed the challenges of navigating sustainability transformation in complex organizations. Laura emphasized the importance of understanding the specific issues related to different industries and helping companies make sense of the plethora of communications about sustainability. She also highlighted the need for a strategic approach that goes beyond compliance and data gathering. Alex added that decision-makers need both detailed documentation and a summary, and highlighted the challenge of balancing robustness with simplicity. Laura agreed, explaining that their team aims to help companies think more strategically about their sustainability direction.
Sustainability and Compliance Trends
Alex and Laura discussed the current trends in the space of sustainability and compliance. Laura mentioned that global companies need consistency in their approach and, thus, are following the regulations set by the European market, which are similar to California's. She added that these regulations are pushing for advanced commitments and expectations, not just transparency, but also due diligence on various components. Alex highlighted that compliance is driving communications and actions, and Laura agreed, stating that companies can no longer escape these requirements.
Sustainable Investing: Trends and Challenges
Laura and Alex discussed the importance of high-level communication, particularly in marketing to investors. Laura noted that the demand for sustainable investing, driven by both investors and corporate customers, has remained strong despite political challenges in the US. She also observed a shift in public communications due to political backlash, but emphasized that investor engagement and compliance remain robust. Alex asked for more detail on the types of investors driving this trend, and Laura explained that the demand for sustainable investing is widespread, spanning pension funds, university endowments, private foundations, and state pension funds.
ESG Investing: Trends and Challenges
Laura discussed the increasing demand for ESG factors in investment decisions, noting that retail investors, particularly the younger generation, are increasingly interested in values-based investing. Asset managers have responded by creating new products that incorporate ESG factors. Laura also highlighted the trend of ESG considerations trickling down from larger institutions to smaller organizations. Alex asked Laura about her expectations for the journey of ESG integration, to which she responded that it took longer than expected and she was not prepared for the backlash they have encountered in the past two years.
Sustainability and CSR: BSR's Unique Approach
Alex and Laura discussed the practical and tactical approach to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Laura emphasized BSR's unique value proposition, which aligns with her view of creating systemic change and pushing companies to be more ambitious. She also addressed the company's methodology of working with businesses regardless of their current sustainability level, aiming to drive change in the mainstream. Alex encouraged Laura to share her top tips for companies looking to make small steps in the right direction. Laura suggested focusing on the areas where a company can have the biggest impact, building in from the start ways to minimize negative impacts, and considering decisions that are easier to scale later on.
Effective Communication for Business Leaders
Laura emphasized the need for leaders to communicate authentically and in a way that aligns with their business and customers' language. She also stressed the significance of two-way communication that allows for input and dialogue. Alex highlighted the value of embedding forms in internal communications to encourage employee participation and highlighted the importance of moving away from a command and control structure.
Quotes from the episode
"
We work directly with big businesses because we believe they have the scale of impact and ambition to be able to work and drive real sustainable change.
"
"
We're never gonna get there if the only people who think about sustainability are the people who have it formally in their title.
"
"
If you think about what sustainability is at its core, it's thinking about your impacts and the way the world impacts you from a broader perspective.
"
"
I encourage, whatever function you're in, to think about sort of the process flows and the value chain of the work that you do. And where you might have a broader set of impacts if you simply expand the way of thinking about it.
"
"
Some people these days think about sustainability as only climate change. We think about it environmentally, from both a climate change, nature, and biodiversity perspective, but also the social impacts, inclusivity impacts, and justice.
"
"
I love it when a company does sustainability to be profitable because it means it's gonna be sustainable, and they're gonna keep investing in it."
"
What I don't like seeing is a healthcare company doing great on purchasing renewable energy for their manufacturing but not thinking about access to their medicine."
"
We really look for companies to move the needle on the areas that are most material for them, that are core to who their business is. So companies that are setting ambition, holding themselves accountable, with targets of where they're looking to go and what the progress has been. Being transparent around when they're not achieving that."
"
I think that transparency and honesty around: where we are making change and where it is not enough, and where we as a system need to do better — that's where I get excited because I think that's a way of rethinking and, in some ways, reimagining capitalism, reimagining industry to collectively achieve what we need to achieve to have a sustainable future.
"
Being able to partner with RELAYTO has been just fantastic. We think about thought leadership as a really critical part of how we achieve our mission. We stopped printing things a long time ago. We moved away from paper, but I don't know that we necessarily got anywhere in terms of engagement. So certainly, there are lots of posting of PDFs, emails that don't get opened, and content that maybe someone would need to spend a lot of time reading and therefore never share with their colleagues and other functions. For us really important that we figure out how to make content more digestible, more searchable, more practical and, ideally, shareable. So that when our core counterpart reads some of our thought leadership, they send it on to their procurement teams, their IR teams, and their CFO.
"
"
We want our content to get to different parts of the organization to have the impact it's going to have. That's not going to happen if it's done in, as you say, sort of a 90-page report that sits on a website.
"
"
There are lots of conferences out there with a panel of people all speaking about their best practices and showing essentially the same PowerPoint presentation. We have no interest in doing those kinds of events. But we do events where we bring together our members in a much more interactive way to solve problems together. Again, how do we share that experience? We're really trying to innovate in terms of how we share that thought leadership so that others get to benefit as well.
"
"
If you are in product development at a technology company and thinking about the ethical and human rights impacts of the technology you are developing, you want content that speaks exactly to that. It doesn't have to matter what your title is. You know that the content is really relevant and the examples are going to be relevant.
"
"
We need to make sure that the investments we're making are aligned with our long-term aspirations. I'd say any institution that has that long-term perspective, any long-term investor across the board, has shifted towards more of an ESG mandate.
"
"
Companies depend more on the well-being of society than many countries. It was no question to me that companies needed to think differently about their risks and opportunities and to start to incorporate sustainability aspects in order to run a good business."
Check the the episode's Transcript (AI-generated) HERE.
Author
The fastest way to build digital experiences. We empower businesses to convert PDFs, presentations and other content into interactive experiences & webpages with instant branding, analytics & more
