22 OCTOBER 2024
Over the last four years, we’ve embarked on a sustainability transformation that has profoundly reshaped how we think, work and innovate.
It's been a period of immense learning — about ourselves, our industry, and the power of collective action – it’s also been uplifting and challenging in equal measure. As a business and sector we’re doing things for the first time and mis-steps are inevitable.
Setbacks shape us as much as successes – we shouldn’t hide from them – but we are hardwired to only talk about the things we got right, not when we had to reassess. So, in our latest sustainability update we take a look at some of our learnings as we’ve developed our People.Planet.Positive sustainability strategy.
Strategy: The need for clear, specific aims
One of the biggest lessons we’ve learned is that setting clear, specific aims is vital for driving action and measuring success. We saw this particularly in our environmental goals, where having defined targets helped us turn ambitious ideas into manageable steps.
Setting goals in the realm of social impact has proven to be more complex. Social impact is often context-specific – what is impactful in one neighbourhood, may not be in another, and this aspect of sustainability is still evolving. We’ve learned that it’s not always possible—or even appropriate—to distil complex social challenges into a single goal or metric. But we also know specific and measurable goals drive action.
For example, we found that our original goal of ‘helping local economies thrive’ was too broad to resonate with stakeholders, or direct team actions clearly enough. Reflecting on this, we’ve re-orientated the goal around helping socially positive businesses to succeed and been more specific about our delivery routes for this. Being more specific has helped us define clearer actions while still respecting the inherent complexity and localised nature of social impact.
Culture: Sustained effort shapes everyday actions
Building a culture where sustainability is second nature, embedded into decision making and able to respond to evolving best practice requires a huge ongoing effort. It’s not something that can be achieved with a one-off initiative.
We've seen firsthand that our people are most empowered to act when they feel their role is clearly defined and connected to broader sustainability goals. To help, we developed team-specific Sustainability Roadmaps. These break down the steps each needs to take in any given year to reach our overall objectives and remuneration is tied to progress.
Training has also been essential. We offer tailored learning programs and refresher sessions tied to needs. By creating spaces to share successes and challenges, we’ve started to build a culture that celebrates progress while recognising that hurdles are part of the journey. And we know it works – in our latest staff survey 89% reported they felt empowered to contribute to our sustainability goals.
Partners: Proportionate asks build stronger engagement
To succeed across our environmental and social impact aims, we need the support of our supply chain, occupiers and co-investors. While we’ve always recognised the importance of these partners, at times we tried to move too fast without considering the impacts.
Early on, we recognised that the reporting burden on suppliers was too heavy, so we streamlined our requirements to be more proportionate to contract size and the most material impacts. This small change has led to better engagement and more effective collaboration.
Similarly our green leases, a first in the market and a key lever for reducing building emissions, were initially overly complex and demanding of occupiers, particularly as we were coming out of the pandemic. Listening to them and simplifying the process has increased engagement.
Looking back, it's clear that every challenge has shaped us into a more thoughtful, resilient company. While progress is likely to become incrementally more challenging we’re optimistic that by being candid about our experiences and sharing learnings we can help each other succeed.