Innovation and creativity within your industry is required to make a difference to the way businesses operate in the future. Working collaboratively with other business owners is a major step in all of us doing better for entrepreneurs of the future.
Within your company goals, you will be considering the impact your business has on the environment. Using the sustainable development goals to support your analysis and focus gives you a wider scope to look at social impacts within a global context.
You will find that your work connects with the goals, and that there are many more you can easily achieve through focus and collaboration with other likeminded businesses. You can demonstrate how you are developing the creativity, skills, knowledge, technology and financial resources to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals in any context.
By working to identify the goals to focus on, you are. Building a clear strategy for developing a sustainable way of working in your industry. An opportunity to share your practice and lead the way as a trailblazer in your local area and impacting globally through meaningful action.
IS IT ALL ABOUT BEING GREEN?
Sustainable Business is so much more than thinking about carbon footprints and recycling your rubbish. It encapsulates the forward motion of innovation to find better ways of working across multiple areas of industry.
Thinking about sustainable business practices should prompt you to think about sustainability in every aspect of business management.
This could be thinking about the mental health and wellbeing of your workers. Finding ways to allow your staff to work in ways that are efficient and reduce frustrations in their roles. To find ways of enabling them to feel good about the work and the goals they achieve and to be able to sustain their effectiveness in their job for better outcomes for your company. Looking at benefits for the individual as well as the organisation as a whole. Balancing the needs of the two to work towards innovation in culture as well as working practices.
WHY DO I NEED TO CONSIDER SUSTAINABLE BUSINESS GOALS?
Working with your team to understand sustainability is an action that result in a shared vision. The collaboration and sharing of values around global citizenship and sustainable working within your team is a vital step to better understanding the steps you can take and the aspirations you can align yourselves with.
This process could then feed into the transparent working processes of your company, looking at sustainability on an organisation level. This then builds towards the values and ethics of your working practices, building your commitment to sustainable business practices that will benefit your current employees and become attractive to potential candidates for jobs too.
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT IS NO LONGER A CHOICE BUT A RESPONSIBILITY
Our collective awareness of the need for innovation in sustainability has never been higher. Every business needs to recognise the shift in consumer awareness and the need to respond to this.
The average customer is now more aware and will be more likely to explore the morals and ethics of a company before buying their service or products.
By thinking sustainably, you are developing your company’s identity. By taking action on your goals, you are building authenticity.
Customer awareness means that your client base is making a conscious choice, using digital resources to understand the companies they are buying from before making an investment in them.
WHERE CAN I START?
First, visit the UN Sustainable Development Goals website.
Secondly, give your team time to do the same. Explore the word sustainability and expand your company’s vision of sustainability in business to include all of the goals.
Research your values in your team and make a plan for your specific business within your specific industry.
You may need to start small. You may be ready to go big! It’s all about knowing yourselves as a business and finding the right step to take together with a clear plan for building your commitment and the impact this will have on your business.
Your plan should include steps for accountability. Setting time frames, naming people responsible for parts of the plan, setting check-in times to keep your projects on track. Anything you can do to make sure you make time to make a difference.
HOW CAN I GET INVOLVED IN THE BUSINESS SPACE COLLABORATIVE BLOG?
Your membership allows you to share an unlimited number of Blogs to the collaborative Business Space Blog.
You can see what other Business Space members are writing about from their industry perspective and pick up some ideas from how other business owners are working towards the sustainable development goals and other approaches to sustainable working in business.
The Business Space blog is a place for West Midland business owners to work collaboratively and share good practice as we all work for more ethical and mindful ways of working to build a sustainable way of working for future generations.
Join today: www.businessspacemidlands.co.uk