Have you had a chance to take a look at our 2012 Sustainability Report? You might find it an interesting read as we cover 100% of Strategic Sustainability Consulting’s seventh year of operations, from July 2011 to June 2012. This year we also focused on integrating more visuals to help support some of the findings and reflections. Here’s a great example, pulled directly from the report, of the life cycle of a sustainability consulting project at SSC. This was developed from an actual project conducted in 2012 with a major financial services company. While each engagement is different, this particular project reflected impacts common to most of our client work (click to view larger):
Jennifer Woofter also shared her thoughts as the 2012 report was finalized:
Let me be honest with you, there is NEVER a good time to write a sustainability report. There is never a period of time where I say to myself, “You know what would be fun? Let’s put aside all of our client obligations, networking opportunities, and business development plans and spend some time rehashing the details of the previous year.” But we do it. Every year, Strategic Sustainability Consulting commits to writing a sustainability report that analyzes the past and charts the future. We measure our performance against last year’s goals to see how close we came to achieving the lofty targets we set the year before. We struggle to make our report more relevant, engaging, and meaningful than the year before.
WHY?
Because sustainability reporting is a planning tool that guides our business strategy. The process of compiling and analyzing the data, deciding on case studies, looking at trends, and developing goals for the coming year helps us hone and focus the direction we’re headed.
Because sustainability reporting makes us pay attention to our promises. It’s easy to make promises in the heat of the moment. But committing promises to paper in the form of specific targets that are publicly available is a whole different kind of incentive for achieving success. We pay careful attention to our goals throughout the year, knowing that we’ll be sharing the results with our stakeholders.
Because sustainability reporting ties back to our mission. When we opened our doors in 2005, our goal was to make sustainability consulting services relevant and available to all organizations—not just Fortune 500 companies and “built from the ground up eco-organizations”. Writing a sustainability report allows us to practice what we preach, and forces us to recommit to our vision: sustainability for every company (including our own!).
Are you struggling to iron out your sustainability report or just starting to think of your 2013/2014 goals? No worries, we have a team of experts ready to help. Don’t hesitate to reach out to us if you’d like to set up a session to discuss further. We are a company built on the principles of sustainability, and that includes a commitment to transparency and disclosure. Be sure to check out our previous sustainability reports to see how far we’ve come.