Buzzwords that circulate the corporate landscape are often invoked much more often than they are implemented or understood. Corporate sustainability has become a topic of prevalent discussion and interest in recent years. Though many organizations talk about corporate responsibility and sustainability, practices that actually accomplish them are not often embedded into an entity’s ethos and operations.

However, implementing corporate sustainability can create significant benefits, and is well worth incorporating into your business operations.

What is Corporate Sustainability?

Corporate sustainability refers to conducting business in intentional, conscientious ways that account for the ways an organization’s existence affects its stakeholders. Or, in other terms, corporate sustainability seeks to lessen a business’s harmful impacts on the world and increase its positive ones.

Corporate sustainability has a wide range of influences and can affect both internal and external stakeholders. The ripples of these actions can become quite widespread. Examples of internal stakeholders include the organization’s vendors, customers, partners, employees or team members, their families, and even their neighbours or acquaintances. These could also include the land, areas, neighborhoods, or buildings that entity owns or operates. Additionally, external stakeholders of an organization could include vendors’ clients, that organization’s geographical locations and surrounding areas, its local and national community and culture, its local and national regulators or governing bodies, the areas where it sources materials, competitors, markets, the world’s environment, and more. The eventual effects of corporate sustainability are nearly limitless.

Corporate sustainability usually takes place within three basic spheres. Environmental corporate sustainability is concerned with a business’s effects on its natural environment. This might include land usage and preservation, chemical use and disposal, pollution, travel, waste, ecological considerations and more. Social sustainability relates to interpersonal, sociological, community, and justice/equity concerns. Enacting it could involve employee wellbeing programs, ethical treatment of workers, advocating for equitable and just treatment of everyone involved in an entire supply chain, supporting humane causes and more. Economic corporate sustainability focuses on areas such as profitability, responsible cash flow and investment, ethical practice, meeting or exceeding regulatory requirements and more.

Examples of Corporate Sustainability in Business

A common example of employing environmental corporate sustainability principles can be found in supply chain development within manufacturing or retail companies. Sometimes referred to as the “triple bottom line,” many companies have employed a three-pronged approach to evaluating supply chain decisions that takes not only the financial but the social and environmental impact of each element within their supply chains into account.

One strategy for employing social corporate responsibility can be to encourage better leadership practice within your company. Negative or toxic leadership can create systemic problems within an organization. By prioritizing leadership skills and human-first approaches to management within every sphere of operation, the long-term success of any organization can be sustained and improved over time. This could be enacted by requiring leadership training for all management positions within your business, offering leadership courses at a discounted rate to your workforce, creating leadership development programs for junior employees or corporately recognizing healthy leadership qualities and actions.

Economic corporate sustainability could be enacted by insisting on working with vendors that also engage in sustainable practices. This can require a bit more work. However, the results of this type of policy can be significantly impactful. Creating this type of commitment to sustainability can create a domino effect that holds not only the organization itself but all the businesses and entities it works with accountable to maintaining sustainable operations.

How Corporate Sustainability Can Benefit Your Business

Each of the examples above require effort and intentionality. They can sometimes be a little bit more expensive or necessitate a bit more legwork. However, the benefits of creating corporate sustainability initiatives can be significant and long-lasting. Here are some of the ways corporate sustainability can help your business:

It is attractive to your consumers and customers. Countless surveys and studies show that today’s markets value sustainability and look for sustainable practices and commitment in the businesses they work with or buy from.

It increases your employee retention and satisfaction. Employees care about sustainability as well. They are often positively motivated by their organization making a commitment to sustainable practice. And when a company values its employees and invests in their wellbeing, employees are much more likely to remain committed and loyal to the organization.

It can reduce cost or overhead. For instance, many eco-friendly operational choices or investments can cost more upfront, but will save your organization resources in the long run.

And finally, developing corporate sustainability practices can benefit the economy, the planet and people both inside and outside of your company.

Creating an effective strategy for your Facebook ads requires careful planning and research. The good news is that Facebook gives you more options than other social media platforms. From targeting specific demographics and locations to creating ad schedules, here are endless possibilities available to you once you become familiar with the process. Here’s how an effective Facebook advertising agency uses the platform to boost an SME’s visibility.  

Focus on actionable metrics over vanity metrics 

Every small business owner has a set of goals they want to achieve in their business – whether it is getting more engagement or boosting your content. 

The problem is that it is common for businesses to focus on the wrong metrics. Instead of focusing on actionable metrics, you could be measuring vanity metrics, which don’t really mean anything, to determine your company’s progress. 

Vanity metrics are those numbers that aren’t necessarily a good indication of your company’s performance. For example, having 100 Likes on your Facebook page doesn’t necessarily mean you have a large following or that your business is making money. It only means that – you are only getting Likes from people who are already your customers and may or may not be buying from you regularly.  

Actionable metrics, on the other hand, tell the real story about how your efforts are paying off, such as the number of leads you have generated from Facebook. For instance, Google Analytics is the best way to track actionable metrics because it will give you more detailed insights into the conversion process, so you can easily replicate it.  

Metrics you should be tracking 

There are plenty of ways to measure the effectiveness of your Facebook efforts. Measuring the below metrics will help you stay on track: 

• Engagement: Engagement is what makes Facebook work for businesses. How many people saw your post? How many people engaged with it? How many people were convinced of your call to action?  

• Response: Look at how people are responding to your posts. Are they negative, positive or neutral? How many comments did you get and what are they about? These numbers will give you a sense of whether you are making the right impression on your audience. 

• Clicks to website: Did people click on links in your posts? If so, how many clicks did you get and where did they come from? All this data will help you understand what kind of content works best for your audience on Facebook. 

• Post reach: Were people exposed to your post in their news feed or story? This gives you an idea of how effective the copy was in drawing attention – particularly if there was a call to action involved. 

Create engaging visual content for your ad campaign 

People process visual content 60,000 times faster than text and it is key to successful Facebook campaigns as visual content can provide your audience with a more engaging experience and improve your click-through rate. It should be eye-catching and relevant, which means it has to match your target audience’s interests. 

Start by creating different types of engaging images as they are the most important part of a Facebook ad. Test the waters to see which works better for you. For instance, try using an image with a graph or chart to share a statistic related to your business and another with a funny pun. This will help you stand out from the crowd of other businesses that are sharing simple text posts but not providing visual information. 

In addition, ensure you choose a compelling image that makes people stop and look at it. When someone sees your visual ad on their newsfeed, they will typically only see it for a couple of seconds before moving on to another post. So, if your ad isn’t able to grab the attention of your audience, you will end up wasting your ad spend.  

Retarget ads to warm leads 

Retargeting is the process of reaching people who have previously visited your website and Facebook ad retargeting is a powerful way to keep your business top-of-mind with potential customers. It is especially useful for small businesses that can’t afford massive advertising budgets and need to stretch every dollar. 

Here’s how retargeting works in a nutshell: When people interact with your ad on the platform, Facebook’s algorithm recognises the profiles and stores their information in the system. You can use this data to specifically target a custom audience group for your retargeting campaign. 

Remember that retargeting is a very effective strategy because it shows that you are not just trying to sell to everyone, but rather you are using data to specifically target those who have already shown an interest in your products or services. So, it is imperative for you to be brilliant at analysing data and using it to your advantage. 

Mind your ad copies 

A general piece of advice for running effective Facebook ads is that it is best to test different elements of the ad until you find one that works for your business. But it isn’t as nuanced as it sounds. Simply getting your basics right, such as writing a compelling ad copy, can also be a great starting off point.   

Here are some quick tips that will simplify the process of writing a compelling ad copy for you: 

• Describe your business and products/services briefly in your ad copy. Make it clear to your customers what you are selling. 

• Be as specific as possible. People don’t have time to read long paragraphs, so try to be concise and get straight to the point. 
• Your audience is likely to include many people who have never heard of you. Therefore, use images that help people understand what it is that you do. 
• Add a call-to-action (CTA) button at the end of your ad copy, letting people know exactly what you want them to do on your landing page (ex. visit, buy, learn more, buy now, etc). 

Bear in mind that narrowing down your segment before writing a good copy can do wonders. But if you continue to struggle, you might want to consider outsourcing Facebook advertising to a professional agency.  

More than just machinery

Any production line consists of far more than just machinery these days. Even with the ‘march of the robot’, many human workers are needed to feed and maintain the equipment in the line.

These operatives fill the hoppers, check the machinery is running smoothly, answer alarms and clear blockages, as well as doing the many jobs that robots can’t, at the moment at least, carry out as efficiently as a human.

Motivating manufacturing workers is essential too

There is a huge number of motivational techniques being deployed in the offices around the world, these corporate ‘cheerleading strategies’ being shown to be effective at keeping the workforce happy and maintaining high levels of efficiency.

Manufacturing workers often feel disconnected

But the same cannot be said for the huge majority of production line / factory workers. Forbes in the USA carried out some research on worker disconnection, and found that :-

“The transportation, manufacturing, and production fields have the greatest percentage of workers who are most unhappy on the job.”

This is something that should worry any manufacturing business as if workers feel left out or ‘disconnected’ from the organisation, it can lead to a variety of unwanted effects:

1. It can create higher staff turnover rates, which at times where the pool of workers is low, can cause real issues
2. It often leads to lower overall productivity, staff simply not feeling it is worth the effort to try as hard as they might
3. It makes day-to-day life seem harder than it really is, factory workers often operating in locations far from the company’s main hub.

As you can imagine, faced with such issues, many manufacturing companies are looking for ways to enhance the communication with their production line teams.

Provide a single source of truth

One successful method has to been to provide what is seen as a single source of truth.  When this is done and all staff feel that they can rely on it, rather than handed down data, has been shown to be good for production, good for the employees and good for morale. 

Other ways of motivating factory workers are

Establish two way communication

Many organisations suffer from only having a one way information flow, that is from the management down to the mid management and eventually to the front line worker, whether these be in the office or factory.

However, it seems that the manufacturing sector suffers from this to a greater degree. As with the ‘office sector’, when this happens vital information does not flow ‘up’ the corporate ladder, something could well degrade overall efficiency.

You can look at operational communication as a pyramid. The very top issues official announcements that then cascade down to the rest of the organisation. In the middle the departments receive these and then pass them down to the lowest level, this consisting of small groups of staff. As this lowest level is where most of the manufacturing staff reside, it is imperative that the flow to this point is consistent and true.

The real importance here is that this level is the one where the factory workers come together to solve problems, overcome challenges and learn from each other. Businesses need to understand the wealth of knowledge that exists here. Operational managers can gain valuable insights into the day to day operations of the business. This gives them the chance to solve issues before they start having a greater impact. It is also true that fixing many small problems has a greater impact than solving just one big one.

However, this can only work where bottom to top information flows are encouraged and where the flow is not just considered as a list of problems, but of matters that need consideration.

Streamline processes and allow quick access to information

Research has shown that the average factory worker can spend up to 10% of their working week looking for information that they require if they are to do their job.

Sometimes, such needs are dealt with very quickly, a nearby co-worker being able to help. However, the answer that they receive may not be the best. Wouldn’t it be far better if there was a fully maintained system where up to date information on the changes and current procedures could be found.

This is leading to more and more manufactures moving to a mobile friendly digital workplace.

Providing ongoing training and upskill support

The fact is that many workers in manufacturing are nearing retirement. However, within this baby boomer generation lies a huge wealth of knowledge, all of which will be lost when they retire, unless steps are made to transfer it to the remaining employees.

Besides this, as the manufacturing industry itself changes, current staff also have to be retrained and new skills learnt. Again research shows that where businesses invest in their staff in this manner, they become more ‘emotionally involved’ and thus try that bit harder in the working environment.

Ensure Health and Safety Information is fully accessible

This is a vital area for any manufacturing business, and one that cannot be ignored. One way that any potential issues can be avoided is to ensure that all staff have access to accurate, upto date information on the procedures and how to steer clear of the dangers that they face every day.

Set up methods that facilitates the transfer of knowledge

All industries suffer from staff churn as people retire and move on to other jobs. And as with any organisation, the transfer of knowledge from old workers to new is crucial when wishing to maximise the efficiency of a business.

Whilst this problem is reasonably well covered in the non manufacturing arena, the manufacturing area suffers from a shortage of the digital tools necessary to ensure this knowledge transfer.

Conclusion

Ensuring that a manufacturing business is operating at maximum efficiency is therefore far more complicated and far-reaching than simply maintaining the production line machinery. The good news is that there are companies like Sandfield Engineering that can provide support in various ways, one of their strengths being their ability to solve complex engineering problems.