How your employee buy-in is crucial in achieving your business sustainability goals

1) Understand your baseline

“You can’t manage what you don’t measure”, so said Peter Drucker, the Austrian American management consultant whose work helped to form the practices of modern business. And it’s the starting point for financial directors worldwide.

Before setting any sustainable targets it’s essential to have a good understanding of where you are today. Separate everything in your business into categories; understand what you need to prioritise, where the low hanging fruit is, and what is the ‘biggest bang for your buck’?

In a rapidly changing market, with new technologies and entrants giving more choice than ever, it is so important for you to have access to your energy data and then, when you understand it implicitly, you can take those steps to reduce your consumption.

Data is vital to understanding how much energy your business uses as well as when and where. If you have the numbers to hand, you can start to reduce costs and increase your profit. Every business is unique and uses energy in different ways, and each will have its own opportunity to shop around and reduce costs; but only when the data is understood.

2) Be brave enough to lead the way

Disclosures are currently voluntary but under the TCFD’s recommendations, companies will be required to disclose the actual and potential impacts of climate change on their business and their supply chain, as well as how they manage the risks. This is potentially a seismic advance towards the global climate change standards that UK business is aspiring to.

Be prepared to be at the forefront and lead the change.

This is your opportunity to become a climate leader by playing your role in the global decarbonisation journey.

Companies are increasingly expected to take climate action. Setting Net Zero targets shows you’re taking responsibility.

3) Get your employees on board

If you are looking to create a robust sustainabilit