Manager Sustainability

Your Managers are your sustainability ambassadors and the Sustainability Report is a key tool in their arsenal, whatever their role in the company. If they are not using your Sustainability Report, your SRM is not engaging them effectively. Your SRM should have her finger on the pulse of how your Sustainability Report is being used in the organization.

A positive and open ended question for a gentle introduction to the subject. The SRM should be able to talk with enthusiasm about the sustainability report and in response to this question is free to select the things that personally gave her the most satisfaction. Whether these things are the same as those which are important to you, the CEO, or to the business, will give you an idea as to how well your SRM is aligned with the business and with your aspirations. The response may also enlighten you about things you may not have realized were such a big deal as you read the Sustainability Report.

Maybe there weren't any. Maybe the report turned out exactly as your SRM envisioned. Maybe not. Understanding how your SRM measured up to her own expectations may tell you a little about the organizational issues your SRM faces in driving sustainability processes. These are the issues where a helping hand from the CEO might just be what is needed.

If you were completely honest with yourself, would you be best suited for a more technical role (e.g., supply chain auditor), a less technical role (e.g., communications) or a managerial position (e.g., self reflection corporate responsibility director or vice president)? Use your self-analysis to filter -- or at least prioritize -- the jobs in your search.

In our experience, this is an often-overlooked issue. Most proposals will specify deliverables - a report, a carbon footprint, etc. But few will take the next step and clearly outline how they (and the client) should judge the success of the consulting engagement itself. It can be extremely helpful to make sure you're on the same page here. For example:

The interviewers want to feel special. Things to talk about could include the training scheme structure, opportunities to take on early responsibility, support for taking professional qualifications or the company's policy on sustainability and social responsibility. You probably shouldn't say that the salary is one of your biggest motivations for applying, even if that is in fact the case.

The best way to prepare for these types of question is, of course, to read up about the company and the wider industry. But you should also consider where you fit in; how will this particular training scheme help you develop as a leader?

There are many different types of possible objectives for Sustainability Reports. These may relate to the collaborative process of developing the report, the cost, the adherence to an agreed timetable without a last minute rush, the amount of time invested, the quality of the output (which may be the report content, design or presentation) or objectives might also refer to the range of feedback received after publication of the report. Of course, we are assuming that your SRM did actually establish objectives. If not, that begs another question.

Everyone likes to quote figures about how potential new recruits (including the zillions of Green MBA and Net Impact grads that join the job market each year) seek socially responsible employers. But once and for all it might make sense to check whether those who joined your company were actually influenced to do so by your sustainability performance.

My job is very involved in energy topics. I'm not doing physical work to make a building more efficient, but I bring ideas to energy management, share information, and find ways for people to get involved with our conservation programs. I helped coordinate forums between energy staff and students to hold conversations with students wanting to get involved.

How can you have a conversation about Sustainability Reporting without ice cream?

Fit is important at the organizational level, but also at the interpersonal level. Make sure that you have met the people who will be working on the project. The most important person will be the account manager (or the project manager) - the person who will be your primary point of contact on day-to-day matters. But it's also helpful to jump on a video conference (seeing them in person makes a huge difference here!) with the entire project team.

Solar. It sounds very obvious, and yet the sun is everywhere around us and is there for the taking. Frankly, the solar industry has been on a very sharp learning curve, so I have expectations that that learning curve will continue and that it will, over time, be able to contribute a much higher percentage of energy.

Every report is a learning process. How does your SRM learn from experience? How does your SRM value continous improvement? This question will enlighten you.

Yes, here is the list of people to give fat bonuses to at the end of the year:)

This is a fundamental question that every company should ask itself before re-embarking on the process another year around. The answer may not be the exactly the same each year and its worth taking a few minutes to articulate specific hopes for this cycle of the reporting process. NB: The response, "because we reported last year" is not really quite good enough.

Sustainability reports have a talent for coming in over budget. The SRM is a business manager and must know how to manage budgets. This question is more about understanding if your SRM has it covered than understanding the gory details of what was spent where.

Of course, I am biased, being a sustainability reporting consultant:) but it is always worth having some external help when writing your Sustainability Report. However, you should know how much it is consuming of your total reporting budget.

Following on from the existential "why are we doing this" question, the obvious next thing to ask is "how will we know if we have done it well". As a minimum, you should expect to hear quantitative targets such as adherence to budget and on-time publication, but equally, qualitative targets about the process of reporting should not be overlooked. Does your SRM intend to get feedback on the process of developing the report? Did your SRM run an effective Reporting Steering Team in which people have had the opportunity to influence? If your report is the single-handed work of your SRM and a consultant, you can bet there's something essential missing.