Our sustainability journey started with awareness.
Like most people and businesses, we were conscious that we needed to play our part and be good citizens. We were doing the basics, looking at how we could lower power consumption, water consumption, etc. In doing so, we made some changes to lower our footprint.
The thing was, it was really hit and miss. We didn't know our footprint and our aspirations were ad-hoc, as were the changes or investments we made.
The real changes came with awareness. We completed a sustainability self-assessment questionnaire in 2021 that showed us how average we really were. We had certainly done some good things, but what was clear was we didn't have a sustainability plan or set of goals. Below is a chart showing the results of our assessment:
Truis' results from the HP Amplify Impact assessment tool, 2021
Now that we knew where we stood, we set about building our sustainability plan. We set goals over three key categories: people, community, and planet. For each category, we listed a number of objectives we would like to achieve, when we would like to achieve them by, and what actions we were going to do for each objective. For each of these actions, we tracked our progress. I cannot express how important this plan was and how much it changed our business.
Our staff were key to our plan; we empowered them, from helping us set the goals to owning how we delivered on them. Besides being an extremely effective way to achieve the goals, it also had a positive effect on our culture. We had previously scored 73% in a Culture Amp survey prior to the sustainability plan, and an 85% post-execution of the plan. It is an acknowledgement of how much people like having purpose for the greater good.
We also sought external help on our plan ranging from experts in carbon, societal impact, people, and culture. We embarked on multiple training courses and invested in new tools to help us measure and manage our sustainability plan. We gained a lot of knowledge from these experts.
I'm proud that our people are happy and engaged at work and in the community. They have delivered on a lot of change and impact for the greater good. This has seen us mature with our sustainability score, moving from average to advanced. We aren't special, we have just set goals and have been working our way towards them ever since.
Truis' results from the HP Amplify Impact assessment tool, 2023
While our journey has only just begun, I can say that awareness, backed up with commitment and goal-setting is crucial to your sustainability impact.