Creating strategy

Sustainability Agenda

We all know that sustainability isn’t just a nice to have any more. It’s a must have, not just because our customers demand it but because it’s the right thing to do. So when a traditional manufacturing organisation wanted to create a strategy to take them from today to net zero in 2030, where did we start?

Scoping & Defintion

In this instance scoping was key and the first place we visited - would we create a multi-site strategy? Would the strategy encompass commercial operations as well as manufacturing? Who was in and who was out? This helped us to define the goals and objectives and also extent of the cross-functional team we would put together.

Education

I’d created strategy before. I had an awareness of sustainability, but I didn’t know enough about it to define a strategy. The team knew bits. We had to educate ourselves. We learnt all about the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (UNSDGs), researched sustainability, swapped information and challenges. We learnt about the overall corporate approach to sustainability to ensure the strategy we developed aligned and we benchmarked. We looked into the requirements of customers. We then used all of this knowledge to define which of the UNSDGs the strategy should impact. How could it make the biggest impact to the environment and employees? The team agreed to biggest impact were in health and wellbeing, equality, sustainable community, affordable & clean energy, responsible consumption and climate action. Stakeholder were consulted and gave their agreement.

Baseline

Before the team could start thinking about the actions they might take to become more sustainable, the current baseline had to be establised. How would the business measure improvement and progress? A set of metrics was agreed covering all 6 selected UN SDGs including, amongst others, tonnes of CO2 produced per million reaches made, site baseload energy consumption, percentage waste to landfill, long term absence and occupational health referrals for stress. Baseline data was then collected for each of the metrics to give the current state. Targets were calculated and agreed in line with our KPIs and objectives and our customer requirements. Again, all stakeholders were kept fully informed and were given the opportunity to input.

Setting the Strategy

Of course, there were projects already underway which would impact the metrics, so it was important to capture these. Then, and aligned with the site investment strategy the team defined all of the individual projects that must delivered to meet each goal. To do this they pulled on existing knowledge, research and creative brainstorming. In addition to this, because you can’t do everything at once, precursors and resources were overlaid to create a multi year strategy, aligned with corporate goals, strategy and KPIs and also local requirements and investment plans. As with every step of the way, stakeholders were invited to contribute and confirm the plan was feasible for all.

Making Strategy Happen

The operation now has a strategy, but unless that strategy can be executed, it’s just a piece of paper. The strategy was communicated to everyone in the business - and actually, sustainability is an easy sell, this was something that everyone could get behind. Then, the sustainability strategy was integrated into the site objectives annually. In line with the strategy, each year the individual projects were projects were chartered and defined in more detail, by the owners to whom they had been assigned. Their progress was measured via the site PMO process, requiring no additional governance meetings but ensuring the overall strategy remained on target to deliver and any issues were quickly dealt with.