Sustainable Business Planning, why it matters....
During my nearly three-decades of running businesses and being a business coach and mentor, most business owners I have worked with have had a very clear vision as to where they want to go and what they want the business to look like. However, I have noticed that this vision is often not fully understood by the workforce, and the team do not understand their role in the journey of the organisation. Similarly, business owners and senior management often have a considerable lack of understanding of the true motivators of their workforce, and how best to utilise these personal drivers to mutual benefit.
And there is often a third, and vital, element missing from the aims of the business – namely their social and environmental responsibilities, and ensuring they operate in a way that benefits people and planet.
These omissions result in a ‘strategic knowledge gap’ which only serves to hold the business back from achieving its full potential, leading to below optimal productivity and issues of staff retention. Coupled with a lack of clear social and environmental awareness, it will result in issues of customer retention, too.
Recent surveys commissioned by Swytch questioning 1000 large firms found that 40% of millennials (who make up three-quarters of the workforce in 2024) said that they’ve chosen a job in the past because the company performed better on sustainability than alternative employers. The responses also showed that millennials were prepared to accept lower pay if it meant working for a company with a strong sustainability focus, and they had greater intention of staying with that employer because of their environmental stance, improving staff retention and loyalty
A Nielsen study into the emerging dominance and spending power of Gen Z consumers found that 66% would spend more on a product if they knew it came from sustainable sources, and that 81% of global consumers felt that businesses must be environmentally responsible. By 2030, the spending power of Gen Z consumers will outstrip all other generations, and they will be wealthier and have stronger spending power and influence than their predecessors.
Customer and workforce priorities are clearly changing; increasingly looking at the environmental and social credentials of a business when choosing where to place their custom or where to work. Sustainable Business Planning is good business sense as well as being the right thing to do.
Whilst a significant number of businesses today will state the importance of sustainability, and even claim they are sustainable, there is often a gap between knowledge and genuine action. Ensuring your business can meet the needs of today whilst protecting the needs of future generations is a balance that we must all attain, with meaningful action and with great awareness.
To help businesses re-focus their strategic aims for the modern world, I have developed a successful ten-step Sustainable Business Planning programme that focusses on the three pillars of People, Planet and Profit. The whole team is engaged in the process, creating genuine buy-in, and ensures that everyone knows the direction of the organisation and their role within it.
Part of this work will include Motivational Mapping all levels of the workforce. As a licenced Motivational Mapping Practitioner, I will conduct a series of one-to-one and group exercises that will tease out the real drivers for each member of the workforce. It is very enlightening when staff realise their true motivations and discover they can act upon them, and the business can see how they can enhance staff performance and create a stronger and deeply motivated team.
The rest of the ten-step programme focusses on how everything the business does fits around the three pillars of People, Planet and Profit, with clear action plans that are easily communicated to all levels of the organisation.
To support this, I will also run individual Executive Coaching Sessions. These are a vital part of the process, ensuring the senior managers flourish as leaders, working with them with tools such as Positive Intelligence to unlock their full potential.
Sustainable Business Planning embraces the entire entity of an organisation - its ambition, its people and its operation. It drives the company’s ethos in a way that binds the team with clear focus, supporting each other, and delivering ‘good business’ that is financially successful and truly sustainable, with people and planet at the centre of everything it does.
I can also work with the organisation to support it to prepare and submit for BCorps accreditation. Sustainable Business Planning is core to this process and will lead to an internationally recognised endorsement that your business is genuinely sustainable and making real change for the benefit of the planet and future generations.
One of the joys of being a business coach is seeing your clients thrive after you have worked with them. A great example of this is my work with Naked Solar. I worked with Tony and Shelley fourteen years ago when they were a new start-up, and now I am working with them again, supporting a new Board of Directors and the expansion of the business, by helping them develop a three-year Sustainable Business Plan.
They recently achieved BCorps accreditation, and the business has a core focus on sustainable ways of working. With over fifty workers and new offices in Exeter (and soon to open in Bristol, too), their expansion and renewed business operation needed sense checking, supported by a clear three-year plan that focussed on People, Planet and Profit. I took the whole team through my ten-step programme and collectively they shaped their Sustainable Business Plan, with a strong understanding of their aims, their people and their social and environmental responsibilities.
“Heather’s guidance and skill have been invaluable. She has shone a light that has enabled us to see clearly where we are going, and how we will get there. I cannot thank her enough.” Tony Samspon, Director, Naked Solar.
Heather Forster, Business Coach and owner of Empower Coaching International. For more information about this and other help I can provide you, please call me on 07967723420, email heather@heatherforster.com or visit www.heatherforster.com