How integrated communications supports sustainability

Originally published by The Purpose Business, 30 May 2019.

‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’

In politics, business and even novels, this phrase is frequently quoted. Whilst its origin may be debated, the phrase fulfils a recognition among us that collaboration is a good and necessary thing if we want to achieve long term success. If you agree that long term success can be defined by a sustainable future, it’s unsurprising that the phrase has been quoted in sustainability contexts too.

Sustainability is often referred to as a journey. Because, it really is. Whether we like it or not, the world is not stopping still – we are forced to move forward through time, and we know now, that our actions today have direct and immense consequences for the future survival of humankind and other species on this planet.

Working together is recognised as a positive, indeed necessary, approach – with different companies and organisations, and even within and between industry sectors. The growth of multi-party coalitions such as We Mean Business, the Alliance to End Plastic Waste and Hong Kong’s Drink without Waste are evidence of this as well as of course, the 17th Sustainable Development Goal being Partnerships for the Goals.

Collaboration is not just external facing. Working across business units and teams within organisations is essential. It is no longer sufficient to a have a single team, sat aside from core business, who ‘do good things and coordinate philanthropic endeavours’ on behalf of the organisation while the rest of the company carries on regardless. It’s clear that this just doesn’t add up if you want your business to be strategic. Sustainability can only truly help future-proof your business when you embed it deep into your core business strategy and give it the platform to permeate throughout all your operations.

And the same is true for your communications.

Resourcing independent efforts for a myriad of communication platforms just doesn’t make sense. Whether it’s a C-suite speech, an investor presentation, staff briefing, marketing campaign or your corporate LinkedIn page – all should be aligned to make sure your communications investment is reaching its objectives in the most effective and efficient manner. And crucially, when it comes to sustainability, failure to organise, prioritise and align your communications can undermine the authenticity of the message you are trying to convey.

So, point 1. Tell one story.

Your audiences (or ‘stakeholder groups’ in common sustainability parlance) are fluid, with people moving in and out of them during the course of their day. If your investor hears one message at a briefing but she sees another, perhaps even contradictory, message in an advertisement, at best you have confused your audience. At worst your message is seen as inauthentic and the trust in your organisation is diminished.

How do you tell one story? This is where a robust, communications structure comes in with an over-arching message and a framework for your strategic priorities. A hierarchy helps organise your communications in a way that provides the necessary context for people to quickly, clearly and fully understand your messages. All the relevant communications functions in your organisation need to be represented in this key document, including media relations, internal communications, marketing, public affairs, website, social media etc.

The people that you are wanting to communicate with need to be at the heart of your thinking. Be clear on your objective – what you want people to know, do or feel; consider the channels, messages and assets that are needed to make this happen and how you will measure success over time.

‘What’s different about the world today is that, in the past, you could have a different message for investors, people who cared about the environment or your employees,’ reflected Jeff Harmening, chairman of the Board and CEO of General Mills, at a recent conference, ‘Today, the message has to be clear and be the same.’

The exercise of preparing an integrated communications plan can often serve to build clarity and understanding of your sustainability strategy. As people reflect and deliberate on the meaning of your sustainability ambitions and activities, and consider what these mean for different audiences – the impact of your strategy will likely gain strength and momentum.

2. Tell the whole story

The world clearly doesn’t have all the answers and actions in place right now for a sustainable future, yet the appetite to understanding what businesses are doing is demonstrated by a rise in investor interest and a growth in the sophistication and extent of ESG reporting.

Your communications should demonstrate intent, extent and progress. Considering again, the principles that sustainability is a journey, and that trust is key to successful sustainability communications, it is essential that the work – not just completed results – are shared. The temptation to remain silent on a subject until the result is delivered, gift-wrapped with sparkles, will not help build trust. ‘Candor, honesty and transparency are all powerful trust-building elements’ reported the 2019 Edelman Trust Barometer. And importantly for sustainability, transparency supports the much need collaboration that the world needs to succeed.

This may feel uncomfortable for some, but it is crucial. Your message should outline the intended direction of travel, and regular communications should demonstrate the actions that you are taking to support this journey. Remember, it’s absolutely ok to take small steps.

Your communications also need to acknowledge the difficulties and challenges that your business is facing. The sustainability challenges in the world are complex and no one has THE answer. By sharing the intent, extent and progress of your strategy, you give context to the challenges and can communicate your approach, on your terms, and sharing will help secure the trust and momentum you need to pursue your sustainability goals. As the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) notes, ‘increased transparency leads to better decision making, which helps build and maintain trust in businesses and governments.’

3. Show don’t tell

Your communications should demonstrate the world that you want to live and work in.  Too often, communications lose impact because their context or content is misaligned to their message.

Examples such as promoting a ‘save energy’ message on a massive digital screen outdoors, having an all-male panel talk about gender diversity and building ‘green walls’ out of plastic plants, are sadly all real and all serve to undermine the sustainability message that the organisations were trying to convey.

‘Show don’t tell’ is particularly true with images. If you have a strategy to reduce single-use plastic, populate your image library with pictures that show people with re-useable water bottles, glasses and crockery, rather than the single-use plastic water bottles or coffee cups you are trying to avoid. If a picture paints a thousand words, then make sure you use images (and resources and time) wisely and focus on what you do what people to do. Equally as powerful, your imagery has a huge opportunity to reinforce the positive future you are working for – whether that be wind turbines on a horizon, or gender parity in the workforce, every editorial decision you make demonstrates intent. Organisations like the Conscious Advertising Network provide guidance for advertisers and agencies on how to consciously change the way they operate and the content they produce, for better communications.

The environmental and social challenges that the world is facing need collaboration on an unprecedented scale if we are to secure a sustainable future. Committing to an integrated approach to your sustainability communications will strengthen your strategy and its delivery – and this work is too important to not give it every tool in the box.

Originally published by The Purpose Business, 1 August 2018.

Summer brings a mass of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) reports from Hong Kong listed companies and you’d think for many corporates, the huge amount of effort that creating the report involved would be exploited through their corporate communications. Yet time and again emails, social media accounts and press releases announce their arrival in minimalist – if not reductionist – style: ‘a report was published’. Hang on a minute … hit pause … this is ESG – the big stuff set to have the most tangible impact humankind will ever realise, survival – such work is surely worthy of a more considered communications approach?

The Hong Kong Exchange reviewed the ESG reports of 400 listed companies published to reflect activities during the first year of mandatory reporting, financial year starting 1 January 2016. 

The Exchange’s report serves as a useful benchmark on corporate ESG activity in Hong Kong, and the areas highlighted by the Exchange for improvement can be seen to indicate both the direction of travel and ambitions of the Exchange. One of the themes, I see running through the report is the articulation of ESG activities – and the findings reveal some interesting and consistent messages on the importance of good communications within reports themselves, and each observations also provides a good grounding for planning corporate communications that really engage a diversity of today’s stakeholders and audiences.

Tell it like it is - and make sure you tell

Among the Exchange’s analysis the report identifies areas for improvement, and the first of these is communication.

The Exchange asserts that ‘the primary function of ESG reporting is to communicate a company’s commitment and approach to ESG reporting and the process by which it identifies relevant ESG areas.’ Whilst no company should be reliant on a report as a sole or independent communication channel, it is clear that there is an expectation and need for companies to ensure their audience – ie their stakeholders – understand what and why their business is doing with regard to ESG issues.

As the Exchange reports notes, ‘effective communication with stakeholders is crucial to a company’s success’, and this rings true beyond your ESG report. Clearly every company has a multitude of different stakeholders with differing influences and dependencies on that business. Identifying your different stakeholder groups is not only crucial for your materiality assessment, but also a critical foundation for understanding and building effective corporate messages and communications channels. Stakeholder identification and engagement strategies are common areas where organisations value working with external, specialists such as TPB.

Keen to be compliant, clients sometimes ask us, ‘Are we doing ok?’ A common response includes, if you are articulating your business strategy, clearly demonstrating your processes for identifying your present and future risks and opportunities, and explaining your plans for addressing these through your business, then yes. The key is in the communication as well as the thinking and the doing. Without the communication, no-one knows about the thinking and the doing, and without communication, progress and growth on the thinking and doing is obstructed.

Hong Kong companies are not alone in being called out for this – the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) itself, when evaluating its previous sustainability report received feedback that they ‘should be more explicit about how we engage with our …and ensure that we made engagement a part of our day-to-day business practice.’ The emphasis on communications is consistent, and the message that consistent communications builds a better business is clear!

Resourcing ESG responsibility

Responsibility for a company’s ESG activities ultimately lies with the Board, and it is for this reason that the Exchange emphasizes the value and importance of having Board members involved in ESG reporting. ‘Through scrutinising the issuer’s environmental and social policies and data, the Board will also be in a better position to evaluate and respond to the issuer’s environmental and social risks and opportunities.’

The Exchange also stresses the need for clear lines of delegation from the Board to an ESG working group that has authority, knowledge and resources to deliver on its terms of reference. Sustainability is a rapidly developing professional specialism, and it is here that many organisations will righty seek the support of specialist sustainability agencies such as TPB. A useful measure in successfully engaging a sustainability consultancy would be openness for knowledge sharing, so whether through for example a Boardroom briefing, a strategy stress-testing session, or an employee relations workshop, the in-house appetite, understanding and capacity around ESG is developed.

Building organisational capacity also helps ensure that your company gains confidence in speaking about sustainability from eg the Boardroom to the customer-service centre. The more your organisation speaks about the ESG issues that provide your particular risk and opportunities, the stronger and more assured your corporate sustainability voice will become.

Get out of the box 

Another strong message from the Exchange is that there is no place for box-ticking: ‘A box-ticking approach to reporting should be avoided as it would not add value to the process and would deprive the company and its stakeholders of the benefits of ESG reporting.’

If you are ticking boxes for ESG reporting, not only are you failing to look at risk management properly, you are defining yourself on someone else’s terms. What makes your business unique, different to your peers and competitors cannot be defined if you think inside the box, and definitely not inside someone else’s box. Understanding your unique offering in the marketplace is paramount to business success.

In recent years companies have increasingly sought to understand and articulate their purpose, to understand the ‘why’ behind their market offer. For many, this is not a quick nor easy process but there is no doubt that along with the other benefits of purpose-focused thinking, it provides a particularly strong basis from which to identify and plan an ESG strategy that is truly relevant.

One size fits nobody - context, materiality and communications 

‘It is important to set out in the beginning of the ESG report the company or the Board’s commitment to ESG and management approach and explain how they relate to its business. It should also include the Board’s evaluation and determination of ESG risks and how it ensures that appropriate and effective ESG risk management and internal control systems are in place.’

‘How they relate’ is a powerful phrase, and setting the time to work out how your ‘how’ is articulated in a tone and language that is authentic to your company voice, is time invested in a valuable communications tool that will stand you in good stead.

Given the emphasis on context it is somewhat surprising that , there was no explicit mention of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, or Global Goals) in the Exchange’s analysis. Yet it is hard to imagine a listed company, that is not impacted by or able to contribute to, the globally agreed targets to end poverty, fight inequality and stop climate change.

The UN has reported that Asia-Pacific needs to ‘significantly step up’ its efforts with regards to the SDGs, and that as region it is currently ‘on track to meet only one of the SDGs’.

Whilst the 17 SDGs and the 169 targets and 230+ metrics that support them can seem overwhelming at first, no one private or public body is expected to solve the world’s biggest problems alone. The SDGs are a framework for focusing on your organisational ‘how’ – for measuring and communication impact, and crucially to collaborate across industries, sectors and geography.

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Maybe in time we’ll begin to see companies in Hong Kong engaging stakeholders with messages about the impact they’ve made, rather than notifying an echo chamber that, ‘a report was published’. Let’s hope it’s sooner rather than later, as the issues at the heart of sustainability strategies are urgent, and the world will not make the collective progress it needs to if we can’t collaborate, learn and thrive.

In Hong Kong, I’ve observed that organisations are often keen to wait until something is complete, boxed and gift-wrapped for perfect delivery before they talk about. This misses a key point in sustainability communications – as with all things sustainability – that transparency builds trust. Sharing your ambitions, direction, and challenges demonstrates authenticity, as well as providing more opportunities to engage and learn from your stakeholders. It will help to build stronger communications for your company and strengthen your reputation beyond your ESG report.