We hope you enjoyed the 2012 WBENC Conference and returned to your business ready to create new opportunities and strategies. We appreciate your interest in Framework’s services.
As a woman-owned consulting business ourselves, we know the value of supplier diversity. And as specialists in helping businesses manage for sustainability, we’ve identified many additional ways in which companies can position themselves to be competitive in the modern marketplace, whether they’re purchasers or suppliers (and most companies are both at least part of the time). So, we’ve created this page to offer you a few resources that summarize some of the benefits of an effective sustainability strategy.
Once you’ve scanned them, click the link further down the page to learn more about the 10 essential aspects of a successful sustainability strategy and how Framework can help you develop your own Sustainable Advantage.
Sustainability-Focused Companies Outperform Their Peers
Bloomberg, 02.17.12
A Harvard Business School study that tracks the performance of 180 public companies over 18 years—the first of its kind to follow companies for decades—finds definitively that those that adopted environmentally and socially responsible policies significantly outperformed their peers. Every dollar invested in a portfolio of sustainable companies in 1993 would have grown to $22.60 by 2011, 47% more than the $15.40-per-dollar return of a portfolio composed of companies less focused on sustainability.
The Value of Sustainable Procurement Practices
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, December 2010
Sustainable procurement, as defined by PWC in their research of the practice, means taking into account economical, environmental and social impacts in buying choices. Their study finds that such programs pay back up to 85 times their cost of implementation in the form of risk and cost reductions and new revenue-driving opportunities. Given these facts, it’s not surprising that an increasing number of both purchasers and providers are paying careful attention to performance in these areas.
Advocating for Impact: What Workers Want
Net Impact, 05.28.12
Talent Report: What Workers Want in 2012, a nationwide U.S. study conducted by Net Impact (an association for sustainability management professionals and recent business-school graduates) and Rutgers University, provides a revealing picture of what students and professionals most value in a job. Employees who have the opportunity to make an impact on social or environmental issues on the job are more satisfied with their jobs than their colleagues who don’t by almost a 2:1 ratio, and nearly 60% of recent graduates would take a pay cut to work at a company with values similar to theirs.
Calculating the High Cost of Employee Turnover
thinkingleaders.com, 04.21.2011
Estimates of the total cost of losing a single position to turnover range from 30% of the yearly salary of the position for hourly employees (Cornell University) to 150%, as estimated by the Saratoga Institute, and independently by Hewitt Associates. Given the high percentage of employees who plan to seek new employment opportunities as the job market rebounds, HR professionals need to understand turnover’s costly impact and focus on ways to keep their best employees on board by implementing programs that increase employee satisfaction and retention.
To learn about the aspects of performance that position a company competitively in the eyes of purchasers, investors, employees, partners, consumers, and other crucial stakeholders, see Framework’s 10 Drivers of Supply Chain Sustainability.