In Part 1 of this article, we shared eight of the top trends in sustainable business. For a quick recap, those included: sharing resources, connectivity, top-down influence, interactivity, social-tie density, consumer consciousness, women-owned businesses taking the lead and virtual reality. For a more complete refresher, you can read the full article here. But, there’s more to talk about when it comes to actions businesses are taking to increase their sustainability and responsibility. There’s a lot more than lip-service happening; we’re actually seeing a shift in how business is done. Below are some more sustainability trends that are changing the face of business.
Disruptors
Companies are more willing to break away from the norm and disrupt the way “things have always been done.” Sometimes the change is made out of pressure, other times it’s done out of a visionary seeing a better way of doing something, seeing a possibility. The disruption may come about due to innovators, technology changes or changing preferences.
The Internet of Things and smart homes are impacting energy companies (not to mention cool, now-firmly-on-my-wish-list innovations like the Tesla Powerwall). The world of finance and banking is being challenged by crowdfunding. We’re seeing it everyday. People are getting more innovative and willing to take risks to challenge the traditions and norms established by an old-school way of doing business.
Continued pressure for renewable energy sources
Let’s face it, we’re probably a long way off from cutting the dependency on coal, oil and gas. But there’s increasing pressure (pardon the coal pun) on energy companies to acknowledge their role in global warming and to focus on clean energy solutions.
Reimagining the workplace
In the first part of this article we talked about how technology is changing the workplace. But businesses are going beyond virtual employees to reimagine the workplace to accommodate a changing society. Recognizing the contributions of senior employees who are not ready to retire but can still be valuable contributors to a business, offering flexible schedules or childcare, favourable contracts, a focus on continuing education. These are all benefits that will strengthen the workforce and even increase loyalty and longevity, which will decrease turnover costs and bring those intangible benefits to a business.
Resource reporting
I think we can all agree that we’re in a crisis when it comes to certain materials used in manufacturing. Their inclusion in products comes at an alarming cost to the environment. Palm oil. Forest products. The 17 “rare earth” chemical elements used in things like batteries, fuel cells, wind turbine generators. Found mainly in China, their use comes with great economic, security and environmental challenges. More and more, consumers are placing pressure on companies to increase transparency and disclosure on the use of these types of materials.
Sustainability reporting & accountability
Businesses are facing growing pressure from all angles to regularly offer sustainability reporting. It’s coming from consumers, shareholders, executives, investors, activists, analysts, employees and more.
Engagement
Businesses are recognizing the power in getting the consumer engaged, rather than holding them at arms length. Now businesses are specifically reaching out to consumers, in most cases to the younger Millennials, to help drive change through sustainable lifestyles and more ethical buying decisions.
Tackling modern-day slavery
Human rights violations across the globe are steadily increasing as workers, mainly in third world countries, are exploited and subject to inhumane working conditions. Workers’ rights are violated or ignored and illegal labour practices continue. Companies are facing increased pressure for accountability and transparency not only from activists and consumers but from governments, and even the pope.
More diversity
This is not just a gender issue, but focuses on race, sexual orientation and ethnicity, too. Within the past couple of years we’ve seen some of the tech giants release their employee diversity numbers, and now companies are starting to include diversity targets in their goals.
We’ve come a long way, but many days it feels like we have an even longer way to go. But the more people we can have involved in the conversation of doing what is right—for the environment, for people, for business—the better we’ll become with each day. There is no easy solution, there is not one hero. There are thousands of everyday heroes who are each working to make a change for the better, and the result is going to be a disruption that will one day become the norm.
Share your thoughts about these sustainable business trends in the Comments.
[su_panel background=”#f2f2f2″ color=”#000000″ border=”0px none #ffffff” shadow=”0px 0px 0px #ffffff”]by Angie Salibury
