Sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability

Sharing Awareness is an approach with multiple applications, based on an ethical approach to people and relationships, and therefore to the conditions and atmosphere of their workplace.
In this context, it is entirely natural to propose the creation of a sustainable development plan to the group of which one is part.

 

Sustainable Development in the widest sense is composed of 4 components:

 

Social Sustainability: understood as the ability to ensure that the basic conditions of human wellbeing (security, health, education) are equally distributed between different classes and sexes.(*)
Environmental Sustainability: understood as the ability to maintain the quality and the reproducibility of natural resources.(*)
Institutional Sustainability: understood as the ability to ensure conditions of stability, democracy, participation and justice.(*)
Economic Sustainability: understood as the ability to generate income and jobs to sustain the population.(*)

 

In a company context, social and environmental sustainability can be achieved by implementing relatively simple organisational measures and applying a modest economic investment.
But the advantages are huge: improvements in working conditions – both from an environmental and psychological perspective – leads directly to an increase in productivity and in product quality, along with clear reductions in wastage of time and resources, plus a rise in turnover generated by a higher quality service provided to customers.

 

Note this fact: according to a study titled “Global RepTrak® Pulse Complimentary Reports – 2013” carried out by the Reputation Institute consultancy company, those companies which produce and behave ethically and which respect the environment, ensuring their collaborators a workplace mood that is fair and serene, are preferred and recommended by 73% of all consumers.

 

The same study indicates that for 42% of those interviewed, the brand reputation of a company is based on factors such as transparency, workplace environmental quality, ecological programmes and support for social causes.

 

Unfortunately, the degree of attention paid by consumers to company social responsibility has not yet been fully grasped by the companies themselves. The three-yearly United Nations Global Compact and Accenture survey – conducted with 1,000 CEOs and 8,000 participating companies – indicates that although the people interviewed agree on the benefits derived from applying sustainability to company ethos, they also clearly admit that they feel the lack of suitable market conditions.

 

The same study also indicates that even in the absence of an optimal synergy between governments and businesses, the adoption of sustainable strategies does tend to bring benefits with it and consequently commercial success.

 

To sum this up, both these studies demonstrate that companies who adopt serious sustainability policies thereby stimulate opportunities for innovation and growth which improve their market positioning, and consequently also create positive results in economic terms.

 

(*) Translation of https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sviluppo_sostenibile

 

 

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