This Earth Day, Make a Pledge Towards Business Sustainability

Employees are ready to make positive green changes in both their personal and professional lives and therefore businesses must be prepared to make pledges that are not only sustainable, but regenerative too. And what better time to start than on Earth Day?

Earth Day is celebrated annually on April 22, and is dedicated to raising awareness about the various environmental challenges that face our planet today. According to the Earth Day website, “For Earth Day 2022, we need to act (boldly), innovate (broadly) and implement (equitably). It’s going to take all of us. All in.”

Climate impact is listed as one of the 17 UN Sustainability and Development Goals and climate change has been identified as the number one long term risk to businesses, according to the World Economic Forum. This Earth Day, it’s time to take action.

Reaching greener goals and being sustainable is now critical for businesses that want to evolve and flourish long term. In fact, 59% of corporate travel decision makers feel passionately about greener corporate travel programmes, but still find it difficult or are unsure how to put it into practice.

Adoption of sustainable policies brings commercial benefits, which is why bringing about these moments of change should be a top priority for leaders. Studies from around the world have identified that those companies focused on environmental and social governance credentials have broader finance options available to them.

To help organisations manage sustainability pledges, we ran a webinar, The Sustainable Business Challenge. Our host Ami Taylor, Product Strategy at SAP Concur & Co-Founder of Level UK, discussed what a greener future looks like and how businesses can transform to become more sustainable. Joined by Marta Muñoz Méndez-Villamil, Senior Research Director and Lead Technology & Sustainability Practice, IDC EMEA, we explored how technology can help your business achieve these sustainability initiatives.

We’ve summarised a few key points from the webinar below.

Committing to Successful Business Sustainability Strategies

The UK Climate Change Risk Assessment of 2022 has reported that “quite soon, climate change will be costing the UK economy £26 billion per year.” It’s already costing that in other countries. We must accept where we are in order to try and fix it.

Organisations tend to want to know “How can we grow?” but it’s important to keep sustainability in mind when strategising the answer. When asking yourself “What am I giving back to the planet by going through this phase of growth?”, perhaps an alternative could be “How can we grow while becoming a regenerative business?”

Businesses Need to Act Before It’s Too Late

High sustainability organisations outperform others in the long run both on profitability and accounting performance. Risks are managed more effectively because businesses are out in the real world attracting top talent who are engaged, which means they can innovate and make their business run better.

The desire for moments of change is coming from the top and the board who have been given a command to evolve the organisation and the ethos. Similarly, “it’s a bottom-up approach from the employees who are valuing that change and they really want to see that change take place”, Marta explained during the webinar.

It was announced at COP26 that businesses of a certain size must now publish plans for how they’re going to become net zero. Soon, businesses will become legally liable for emissions as well reducing or offsetting them and it makes commercial sense to get ahead of this. There are many different actions business can take to become more sustainable with SAP Concur solutions, from holistically implementing green policies to showing employees the impact of business travel.

SAP is actively working to become carbon neutral by 2023. Will your business make a similar pledge?

To find out more about why businesses need to act now on their green goals, listen to our webinar, The Sustainable Business Challenge.