[ECO]3 Often Overlooked Areas in Sustainability Management

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3 Often Overlooked Areas in Sustainability Management

Here we invite Phil White of Grounded World to discuss 3 of the most often overlooked areas in Sustainability Management. 

You may have heard sustainability management professionals and practitioners talk about sustainability with a big ‘S’?

This is really meant to highlight the fact that sustainability management often tends to focus on environmental initiatives and concerns –  like reducing carbon emissions, removing waste or focusing on renewable inputs and materials. 

The ‘S’ refers to the social aspect of sustainability – or the people part – and can incorporate anything from diversity, equity and inclusion to volunteering, corporate governance, company culture and health and wellbeing in the workplace.

So here are 3 often-overlooked areas in sustainability management that focus more on the human, experiential and behavioural aspect of sustainability that often get overlooked but have the potential of improving productivity, reducing risk and creating positive impact, beyond the environment.

1. Employee Wellbeing and Engagement

Rather than mental ‘health’ or wellbeing, think about creating ‘mental wealth’. Mental wealth is our ability to manage our thoughts and emotions to adapt and react to challenges in a way that aligns with and advances purpose and principles. Here at

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we believe that companies have a responsibility to help their people to grow and develop their mental wealth. So here are 5 things you can focus on that translate directly into corporate governance and leadership, employee engagement, recruitment and retention, while boosting overall job satisfaction and a sense of personal wellbeing.

1. Connection & Belonging: Fostering a sense of community within the organisation.

2. Value Contribution: Empowering individuals to take pride in their contributions as meaningful and impactful.

3. Meaning: Cultivating an awareness of and reframing daily jobs and activities as *******  positive outcomes

4. Recognition: Acknowledging and appreciating individuals for their contributions and making sure that intervention around non desirable behaviour are dealt with quickly, fairly and transparently

5. Autonomy & Growth: Crafting a clear path forward with the support, challenges, and freedom your team needs to pursue their potential.

2. Responsible Data Management and Security: Most organisations collect far more data than they need or are able to analyse and use. According to
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   , 60% of the data that organisations collect is unused –  because it is either redundant, obsolete, or trivial. 

A lean (vs big) data approach not only allows you to better align with corporate

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(by saving the need for data centres and associated energy usage required for processing) but also reduces the risk of becoming a high-value target for cyber breaches   that are increasingly used for blackmail, extortion and identity theft.

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, Apple, Tesla, T-Mobile and ********* Express have all recently been victim to cyber attacks that have seriously damaged customer trust, lead to financial penalties or at best – disrupted operations and cost money. So what can be done?

Well, a good place to start is to understand your data footprint through a data discovery initiative.  

• Remove or minimise data from environments that are at risk of being breached because they don’t have enough protective controls. 
• Classify and categorise the data based on privacy requirements, your storage and retainment management policies, and the criticality or level of risk to the data.
• Leverage technology to encrypt sensitive data, centralise control, foster employee awareness and provide training around data privacy and cyber security practices
• Conduct regular audits and deploy monitoring systems – especially in shared cloud environments.

3. Volunteering & Corporate Partnerships

There are 5 different types of capital that an organisation can use and deploy to advance and improve sustainability management. See diagram below from

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/applications/core/interface/js/spacer.png">

One of the ways that social and human capital can be best deployed is through volunteering and community partnerships, especially when it comes to supporting national or local nonprofits.They typically need‘ boots on the ground’ as well as ‘financial capital’ to enable them to function, realise their mission and deliver meaningful impact at scale. According to

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, a whopping 40% of businesses claim that partnerships with charities are important to their business agenda. 

Each organisation will approach this differently – depending on what their brand stands for, the types of products or services they offer and the socio-demographic and psychographic make-up of the communities they operate within. There are so may great examples of companies stepping up, offering social and human ‘capital and support…but here are some that have caught our eye that you might find inspiring:

1. A recent Cannes Award Winner, schoolgirls took over as newscasters on Pakistan’s three leading news channels for one night to emphasise Pakistani ******’ right to education. See video
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   offers its employees extremely generous matching gifts benefits when donating to nonprofits. Even more useful to nonprofits of all sizes is its
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   Grants programs.This grant provides nonprofits with $10,000 to use in advertising through
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   ’s search results. It’s an amazing way for nonprofits to expand their audience and reach out to potential supporters.

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   (***)

Samaritans has been working with Network Rail since 2010 to reduce suicides on the railways and support everyone affected by them. They have won more than ten awards in recognition of their outstanding partnership and training work. By training over 20,000 rail staff they have managed to encourage people in railway stations and other public settings to start a simple conversation if they think someone might need help. On ‘Blue Monday’ ( 16th January) – the so-called saddest day of the year – rail staff join Samaritans volunteers at railway stations, handing out teabags and chatting to passengers encouraging friends and family to stay connected over a cuppa and catch-up.

You can find other good examples of for profit and nonprofit partnerships

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Phil White, Co Founder & CSO at Grounded. They are a multi award winning B Corp certified social innovation and brand activation agency – thriving at the intersection of brand purpose, commercial innovation and social impact – working with brands, retailers, startups and nonprofits all over the world – helping them to articulate their purpose, activate their brands and accelerate their impact.

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