Just 10% of sustainability professionals in North America expects their business’ sustainability ambition to decrease, despite recent economic, political, and regulatory pressures, a new study by the UN Global Compact Networks in Canada, Mexico, and the USA and GlobeScan has found.
According to the study, Leading Through Uncertainty: The Evolving Role of Sustainability Professionals in North America, firms are becoming ‘more selective’ in where they focus their sustainability efforts, including how they communicate and demonstrate progress.
‘Defining test’
Among the key findings were that business value is now seen as the ‘defining test’ for sustainability leadership, with 76% of respondents identifying the need to connect sustainability with value. This underlines the need to ‘translate environmental and social priorities into strategy, operations, and finance’, it noted.
More than three fifths (61%) of respondents said that embedding sustainability into strategy and capital allocation should be a ‘priority’ for sustainability leaders, indicating a shift toward deeper business integration.
‘Sustainability commitments and communications remain important, but they are no longer sufficient on their own,’ GlobeScan commented.
Elsewhere, the role of sustainability professionals is expanding beyond technical expertise, the study found – highlighting the need to influence leadership, work across functions, and drive organisational change.
‘As sustainability becomes more integrated, their role is increasingly to enable action and shared ownership across business functions,’ as the report put it.
‘Lead through uncertainty’
‘Sustainability professionals are becoming more central to how companies lead through uncertainty. Their value will increasingly depend on their ability to connect sustainability with performance, ambition with execution, and embed sustainability into business decision-making,’ GlobeScan commented.
The survey covered 276 sustainability professionals with responsibility for and expertise in corporate sustainability across Canada, Mexico and the US. Read more here and here.
