Customers care about sustainability. Here’s what that means for businesses.
It’s not just the United Nations and passionate activists who are pushing for a more environmentally-friendly future. Just about everywhere you look, efforts to encourage a more sustainable way of life are becoming more visible and more normalized accordingly.
Businesses around the world are facing more pressure to comply with ESG (environmental, social, and corporate governance) targets, and a lot of it is coming from the public itself. This includes their clients and would-be consumers, who are paying closer attention than ever to how ethical businesses are.
What’s a forward-thinking, innovative company to do when facing this kind of pressure? Get professional help, of course, and there are several good reasons why!
Why Hire More Sustainability Professionals?
Businesses have three great reasons to hire more green workers:
1. To Improve Reputation
With consumers paying more attention to how ethical and environmentally-friendly a business is, they’re also a lot more selective about who they choose to patronize.
A company known for showing disdain about climate awareness, or for being wishy-washy on the issue on the whole, isn’t going to score a lot of Brownie points with the public.
“Green professionals” like sustainability consultants, environmental lawyers and similar corporate experts can help businesses show they’re on the right side of history when it comes to fighting climate change.
They can make sure a company is meeting those increasingly important ESG goals, and that the wider public — including their target audience — know this is a business they should be supporting.
2. To Improve the Company’s Bottom Line
A recent McKinsey & Company study found that people are far more willing to support environmentally-friendly businesses, even to the point of going out of their way to do so.
“When consumers are asked if they care about buying environmentally and ethically sustainable products, they overwhelmingly answer yes,” the study found. For example, “more than 60% of respondents said they’d pay more for a product with sustainable packaging.”
Other studies also show similar results, with a clear message that going green can mean more green for a business in more than one way.
Having a reputation as a company that cares about the environment is the first step that paves the way for more business to come in, and having a professional to help manage this is the surefire way to get there.
3. To Help the Environment
But one of the biggest reasons for more companies to bring sustainability professionals onboard is to not just pretend to be environmentally-friendly, but to actually operate in a better way.
Especially for businesses that have been well-established for a long time, it can be hard to break out of the old way of operating. After all, new technologies to help usher in a greener future continue adapting before some can even keep up.
It goes without saying that reducing harmful emissions and everyone doing their part to help the environment is the best future we could hope for. Hiring a green professional better helps you get there!
