In BSR speaker Cody Sisco’s recent webinar, “The Future of Supply Chain Sustainability” he delved into the past of supply chain sustainability to take away four comprehensive lessons that business’s must pay attention to, as well as four tips for remaining sustainable in the future. The latter of these he titled “The Road Ahead.”
The first tip given by Mr. Sisco for moving your company ahead on the road to sustainability was to re-evaluate goals. Ask yourself if the impact you are making is people and environmentally friendly. How do sustainability efforts affect your business? Companies often go through three stages of developing an initiative for change: risk management, supply chain improvement, and supply chain transformation. Oftentimes a business will get stuck in the first two phases of this process; not realizing that in making a dramatic transformation your company will have the most success. Setting goals to getting started is really key, especially for those suffering from “start-up” syndrome, and we just wrote on the topic not too long ago in, “Three Goals to Get Your Sustainability Program Off and Running.”
Mr. Sisco then shifted to his second tip: Focusing on the people. Here he stressed employee engagement and awareness. It is essential that everyone is involved in a company’s sustainability strategies as they will only be successful with the force of an entire team behind them. Employees should also have an adequate educational background when considering them for recruitment, or else you must consider investing in employee training to bring all team members to the same level of environmental consciousness. Not sure what this might look like? We have a great white paper, “Engaging Employees in the Company's Sustainability” on the subject that you are welcome to download for free and learn more.
Our speaker also stressed the importance of measuring your business’ impact, and reevaluating this assessment continually. Otherwise a sustainability goal may not be living up to its full potential and your company’s credibility may be subsequently compromised. You can listen to more of his pointers on measuring your impact here.
The last tip given by Mr. Sisco was that businesses must involve the right partners. This means that partnerships should be professional and beneficial for both parties. Do not involve partners that would be “superficially beneficial” to your team, but look for those partners who have supply chain sustainability goals similar to your own.
Because the concept of sustainability is a “moving target” the standards for achieving it must always be reassessed and innovated to remain up to par with the competition. Find out more about what Cody Sisco has to say on the future of supply chain sustainability here!