Benefits of Sustainable Business
Benefits through doing business responsibly and reasons why a company has to build a business case in sustainable development
There is a growing number of business leaders with a new vision that sustainable development and responsible business is about how companies should behave in their core operations and how they go about doing their business as well as how they make their money.
Most business leaders recognize that their businesses have direct stake in ensuring the success of sustainable development and their efforts to mitigate the impacts of climate change, famine, gender equality, health epidemics and other socio-economic issues are not a burden on their businesses but long-term viability of their businesses.
Following are some of the direct benefits of doing business responsibly;
–Operational Effectiveness; being responsible and sustainable, creates more effective operations and higher levels of efficiency. Sustainable innovations improve a corporation’s processes and practices.
–Employee Engagement; working life of employees, the ability to attract and keep talent, motivation, productivity, satisfaction are also direct benefits to corporations.
–Financial Impact; improving access to capital, reducing costs and improving shareholder value are direct benefits to the financial performance of an organization by being involved in sustainable development practices.
–Risk Management; benefits resulting from responsible business efforts improve a company’s ability to identify and reduce exposure to risk and prepare for and manage risks better.
–Organizational Growth; there is an opportunity for overall organizational growth derived from being a responsible business, whether through sustainable product innovations, new markets, new customers, new partnerships and or shared business / services.
–Organizational Leadership; defined as “leadership achieved through helping sustainable development of the world” is a result of radical change in the internal corporate values and external market reconstitution.
—Brand value and reputation; benefits realized from doing business responsibly, improves the value of the brand and he reputation of the company.
—Macro-level sustainable development; “the impact and the responsibilities of a company at the higher level economic, social and environmental issues.”
Sustainability should be embedded into a company’s DNA, it should be part of the corporate culture and business strategy and should be demonstrated in what gets said and done from the boardroom to the front line employees.
Sustainable development should be a coherent part of the corporate story, not what a company does, it should be what a company is.