Business owner, Charles Southey talks to Nicki about starting his digital marketing agency’s sustainability journey and what he has learnt along the way that might be helpful to other business leaders…
Not Sustainable has been working with digital marketing agency, Forge to help determine and deliver against their sustainability agenda. In return, Forge has been using their unrivalled digital marketing skills to support Not Sustainable, developing our brand identity and website.
We were aware that as a business we have an impact on both the environment and our community, and that we have a far greater ability to change individuals’ activities within the workplace than outside it. So, it has been on our agenda for a while and it felt like the right thing to do, something I wanted to do as a business owner. I also felt that the clients we work with, and those we want to work with in future, are (or will be) expecting us to act responsibly and give back – so it also makes sense commercially.
We wanted to address this properly, not to tick a box at any given time, to do it in a considered way, at our own pace. We knew there would be a cost – in time even more than money – which we saw as an investment but something that would cost less if done gradually than at the last minute.
We started thinking about our carbon emissions and about charity – how we could be more meaningful in our approach and support for good causes. We began to assess where we were with these. We then looked at B Corporation Certification, and started talking to Not Sustainable which drove us to look more widely at all areas of sustainability and start to really understand what was important to our business, where and how we could have the biggest impact.
We started to raise awareness in the office of how we can reduce carbon emissions – of the energy used in our work, the carbon impact of websites we create, where we can cut non-essential travel and where we could use trains instead of planes.
Working with Not Sustainable has given us awareness of the breadth of the agenda. It’s so multi-faceted, and we have many stakeholders, lots of people are connected to our business and not just our employees, those that we work with and for, or those that supply us. Not Sustainable have also helped us understand our true value, how we can really make a difference. We have an ability as a business to have a greater impact through promoting others’ sustainability initiatives and amplifying their message than for example just by giving money or reducing our own emissions.
I have also realised that we need to focus on what employees are interested in. A while back, we did a survey within the team and I expected strong feelings from everyone towards our environmental and community impact. In actual fact, it wasn’t necessarily something everybody had at the front of their minds, so the process has helped to trigger their engagement and awareness too, so that now it’s something we’re all invested in.
B Corporation Certification is really important to us, it gives us a badge acknowledging that we have spent a lot of time and effort, and believe in this. Someone else saying we are doing a good job. We would have been hard pushed to come up with good approach to sustainability without the B Corporation, and Not Sustainable. It has given us a framework for best practice, made us decide what would be practical, and the scoring method allows us to focus on areas of sustainability that are relevant to our business. And through the process of gaining certification, I learnt that actually Forge was already very much aligned with the impacts outlined by B Corporation, so we were very happy to officially commit our focus to their principles of thinking.
The team at Not Sustainable all have knowledge and experience, having been doing this a long time. They know the agenda and the process to go through, and are on the pulse. That expertise has really helped us establish where our value is, how we can use our skills to have a much bigger impact, for example we can give £10 or we can help a charity make £100 by getting their message out. Also, with Not Sustainable, John who is project managing this for us has someone he can go to and ask questions – and get really good, helpful answers.
Our priority remains the B Corporation Certification process. We have achieved certification but in a year’s time, we need to prove we are doing what we said we were doing, and more. Sustainability already forms part of our management and board meeting agendas so now we are looking at ways we can continue to improve. We are exploring how best to help our local community, initially we are planning to support Hackney Lunch Club that works to reduce isolation and increase connection amongst local residents. And we are looking at if and how we can build sustainability into qualification criteria for clients. Ideally, we would hope to be in a position where we can choose to use our skills to support clients that are responsible businesses – but obviously that’s a big business decision and not one we will rush into.
I would say two things – give someone ownership and set a deadline, preferably an external one that can’t easily be pushed back. We couldn’t have done this without John. He’s an external resource but someone we have worked with for a while with a previous focus on compliance. He’s been on this full time, is responsible for delivery, and pushes me to stay on top of things. He is making this happen. For us, our deadline is B Corporation Certification – having submitted our initial impact assessment, they say when the audit is so we need to keep progressing for that deadline.
If a business leader has decided to address this then I don’t think they need much encouragement but if they aren’t there yet I’d say – this is the right thing, why are you not doing it?
