Ten Steps to Operationalizing Sustainability at Your Facility

Building on the "five basics of sustainability," there are 10 steps that a local business can use to implement sustainable business practice.

Whether you operate a facility within a large corporation or a single-facility local business, you probably have some of these practices already in place to some degree.

Sustainable success comes from making sure that you address all 10 steps and incorporate them within a sustainability management system that is driving continual improvement (the 10th step).

So here's the roadmap for your journey to sustainability:

  1. Leaders must establish the sustainability thrust and set the example for employees to follow. In this way, all employees can become fully involved in achieving the organization's sustainability goals. Neither a sustainability policy nor business "strategy" is sufficient by itself.
  2. The business needs to pay attention to maintaining the local "license to operate" with a stakeholder engagement program. The interests of the stakeholders should be included in all operational risk management decisions.
  3. Keep abreast of legislative, regulatory and policy developments for the environmental, social and economic responsibilities. Check regulatory requirements before making any change in the operations.
  4. Adopt a process focus to your activities, products and services. Involve employees in developing process maps and resource productivity information. This information will become your sustainability footprint.
  5. Adopt a systems approach to management by paying attention to the fact that everything is connected to everything else. Look for the causes of problems and never try to solve a problem where you see it. This will always create a problem elsewhere in your operations.
  6. Effective sustainability decisions are based on the availability of footprint data as well as information and knowledge derived from the process view and the systems approach to management. Involve employees in making these decisions.
  7. Move sustainable thinking into procedures and work instructions so that it is part of what every employee does every day. Competency involves this sustainability knowledge, the skill to use the knowledge effectively and the behavioral attributes (KSAs) of the employees.
  8. Link important environmental, social and economic responsibility core subjects to all business processes (e.g., procurement, human resources, accounting, etc.) using the draft ISO 26000 guidelines.
  9. Create a mutually beneficial relationship with your suppliers and customers to enhance the creation of value with attention to the full life cycle of your products and services.
  10. Operationalize sustainability by developing a sustainability management system beginning with an ISO 9001 and/or an ISO 14001 template. Use the sustainability management system to drive the continual improvement to blaze your path to sustainability.

The fact that making sustainability operational at the local level is not complicated does not mean that it is easy!

You should have a formal written approach for use with each of the 10 steps. It is important to deploy that approach in a deliberate fashion using available leading indicators to drive sustainability performance.

While often over emphasized, you need to pay attention to the results (lagging indicators) of the implementation remembering that sustainability results are merely the outcome of your overall performance.

Finally, you need to know what improvement should "looks like" and work hard to continually improve. This will help you fulfill your positive vision of a sustainable future.

In many ways, sustainability is just good business. But there are a lot of moving parts to any business. With your roadmap in hand, you are now on your way.

Robert B. Pojasek, Ph.D., is the practice leader for Business Sustainability at First Environment Inc. and an internationally recognized authority on the topic of business sustainability and process improvement. 



Image: Road to the Sun - CC licensed by etcname.