SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is one of the key “Buzz Words” of our time, and of course can be used in many contexts in life.
However, from our perspective, we are referring to the aspiration of creating an enterprise that has long-term sustainability features built into the business model, with minimal negative impact (but ideally a positive contribution) to the local and global environment, community and wider society at large.

At gutowski & milner we believe that as well as being morally the right thing to do, such a strategy, correctly devised and appropriately implemented will contribute to the business achieving its profit goals / long term success – as opposed to being seen as a “luxury” and having a negative impact on the balance sheet!

The three pillars of sustainability are Environment, Social and Governance (ESG), and these must be taken into equal account when creating the sustainability strategy for an organisation.

Sustainability goals must be defined individually from each of these three ESG areas, as well as creating suitable sustainability indicators.
ESG goals can relate to energy management and resource use in the environmental area. You can focus on internal and external effects on people in the social area, and on ethically / morally impeccable behaviour in the area of responsible corporate management.

A transformation plan should then describe how, with which measures and by when, these goals will be implemented as well as how individual transformation risks will be identified and evaluated.

ESG is not a new topic, and many large corporations already have a Sustainability plan in place.
However, at gutowski & milner we see the growing trend of companies in the SME sector increasingly need to also create and implement such a strategy in their business.

We should point out that ESG should be considered within the wider context of both the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) of which there are 17 in total, as well as the 6 EU Taxonomy Goals.

Longer term, it is our belief that any company without a clearly defined / executed on time – Sustainability plan, will miss opportunities, become less stable and ultimately perform worse than their peers with a plan in place.

At gutowski & milner we have detailed knowledge and experience on this subject, and would be delighted to help you navigate your organisation to a sustainable and taxonomy compliant future.