How to Align Business Activities with Your Organization's Sustainable Development Goals
A growing number of organizations have recognized the need to adopt sustainable business practices and manage their operations in a more environmentally friendly way. Undoubtedly, the United Nations' 2030 agenda with 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted in 2015 has played an essential role in this movement. These goals encourage businesses to take action to employ green and sustainable business practices in order to protect the planet.
Although sustainable development is crucial in mitigating environmental and social challenges, achieving global sustainable development objectives and driving long-term business growth can be challenging. Organizations must align their business activities with SDGs to make a meaningful change, accomplish these goals, and create a more sustainable world.
Given that achieving SDGs are not always a straightforward process, in this blog post, we'll dive into the UN's Sustainable Development Goals, explore the importance of aligning business activities with your organization's SDGs, and discuss how you can achieve the alignment and contribute to a more sustainable future.
What are SDGs?
The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) can be identified as a framework that addresses the most pressing global challenges affecting everyone, including poverty, climate change, and inequality. Involving 193 countries with 17 set goals, the United Nations aims to make sustainable development a task for everyone.
SDGs can also be considered a call for the collective action of governments, society, businesses, communities, and individuals to drive positive change. At this point, it is essential to note the UN's Sustainable Development Goals before diving further into the topic. Here are the 17 goals of sustainable development identified by the UN:
- No Poverty
- Zero Hunger
- Good Health and Well-being
- Quality Education
- Gender Equality
- Clean Water and Sanitation
- Affordable and Clean Energy
- Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- Reduced Inequality
- Sustainable Cities and Communities
- Responsible Consumption and Production
- Climate Action
- Life Below Water
- Life on Land
- Peace and Justice Strong Institutions
- Partnerships to Achieve the Goal
Why Is It Essential to Align Business Activities with Sustainable Development Goals?
Many organizations need help understanding and figuring out how to integrate these goals into their operations. Although some of the world's leading companies are key players in shaping a sustainable future, it is still a big dilemma for most businesses to create a competitive advantage while working towards a more sustainable world.
SDGs not only address global challenges but also unlock substantial value for companies, and this is only possible by aligning business and sustainable development activities. Not achieving this alignment can risk companies being associated with greenwashing, as any change in their companies’ activities toward keeping up with SDGs won't bring any value to their operations and will limit the measurable impact.
Four Vital Steps to Guide Your Alignment Journey
Identifying your business’ material topics, risks, and opportunities not only helps businesses to understand which SDGs are most relevant to their industry, products, and services but also gives you a strategic framework to address sustainability challenges, capitalize on business opportunities, and contribute to a more sustainable and equitable future.
Here, you can see four crucial steps that will help and guide you to align your business activity with SDGs:
-Analyze and find relevant targets
The key to aligning your organization with the SDGs is identifying the relevant goals for your business. To do this, you need to assess your business practices to understand how your targets, business goals, and KPIs relate to your business activities directly or indirectly.
The best way to do this assessment is to consider the touch points of SDGs, including climate, circular economy, development, and ethics. With this assessment, you will understand tangible risks and opportunities for your business. After analyzing your company values, business strategies, products, and services, you can identify the key and the most relevant SDGs for your organization and take the following steps toward them.
-Link your goals to your business activities
The next step is to map out which goals will significantly impact your company regarding risk or opportunity and link those goals to actual business targets and KPIs. This will allow you to understand how your SDGs help you to contribute to your business activities and sustainability efforts and manage your time and resources accordingly.
Understanding the impact of SDG goals on your business plans will help you measure their effect on your organizational goals. This way, you can leverage your existing targets and actions to develop your SDG strategy.
-Strategic integration & collaboration
Once you've identified and prioritized relevant SDGs for your business and defined your goals, it is time to integrate these targets into the existing business strategy, aligning with business models, procurement, and R&D processes.
This is the stage where you develop your business' SDG strategy. It might seem straightforward to stick to your existing strategy; however, you should also consider altering existing business practices in compliance with your SDG goals.
At this stage, you might need to develop new business models, products, or services that drive progress toward the goals, so get ready to engage in innovation and collaboration. Reevaluating, repositioning, and updating your strategy will allow you to identify new opportunities for revenue growth and pinpoint existing targets and actions.
-Report and communicate
It is important to note that you shouldn't wait for ultimate results to start reporting and communicating. Remember that working towards your sustainability goals is progress, and it is more valuable than you think to communicate your SDG goals and report on progress. So, it is better to start your SDG communications once you have defined new strategies, processes, and partners when you know what you are doing!
Being honest and transparent is the key here. Make sure you publicly communicate your tangible actions and actual results towards the SDGs. The transparency and accountability you show in your communications and reporting will help you strengthen trust in your brand. However, you can choose from many SDG reporting frameworks, and deciding which one to go with seems daunting initially. It is better to focus on the practicality and efficiency of the tools and ensure they allow you to share your results and progress transparently and accountable, leaving no room for speculation or doubt. The frameworks you can choose from include:
- The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
- The International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).
- The Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
- The UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC).
If you are still determining which fits your organizational needs better, check out Intengine's directory on sustainability reporting. You'll find various experts to help you with your reporting journey there.
Whether you’re a small start-up or a large multinational corporation, you can expect growth in your economic impact, environmental stewardship, and overall positive change on a global scale for your business by aligning your business strategy and sustainable practices to the SDG framework. The alignment is not an easy one. However, you can find practical guidance on achieving it and keeping updated with recent developments by following Intengine’s blog for more insights.
Tags: sdgs, sustainable development goals, gri, iirc, tcfd, frc, business alignment