68 I NT E R V I EW Christopher Dann gives an insight into the findings from Publicis Sapient’s new sustainability survey and explains how businesses can achieve their goals while remaining profitable and competitive Climate-related crises, more ambitious governmental targets, changing environmental policies and regulations, and shifts in consumer behaviour and expectations are prompting businesses in every industry vertical to prioritise sustainability. This is certainly what digital transformation partner Publicis Sapient found when it surveyed highlevel executives working at medium to large companies in the agriculture, airlines, energy, manufacturing, midstream, oil and gas, and utilities industries to gain their insights into how sustainability fits into their business strategies, and some of the cost benefits and limitations. “It’s no surprise that our survey showed most executives are prioritising sustainability as a key corporate goal and factoring it into their strategic decision-making processes,” says Christopher Dann, senior managing director at Publicis Sapient. “For 76 per cent of executives, the primary motivator for developing sustainability goals is social responsibility and the feeling that is the right thing to do, while 62 per cent want to invest to ensure their business can continue to grow, and 43 per cent aim to do it to maintain or improve their company’s public reputation.” In addition, 96 per cent of respondents believe that improving sustainability practices would be a good long-term business decision and 40 per cent predicted that their earnings would grow by 5-10 per cent if they were to do so. However, they are still hesitant to commit to such investments. In total, 98 per cent of the respondents said they would be unwilling to trade-off more than 0-10 per cent of their earnings, and more than half (58 per cent) said they would not exit a profitable business or divest a profitable asset in the next five years to achieve their sustainability goals. “Although most executives currently rate sustainability as a top business priority, they also indicated that these goals would likely become less important if they risked losing earnings or if the economic landscape changes,” says Dann. “For example, one in five said that current inflation rates have already prompted them to decrease their sustainability targets. This hesitancy isn’t surprising – organisations must operate profitably to survive and remain competitive, so they don’t want to invest too much in something that they feel may jeopardise their ability to do these two things.” The survey indicated that 80 per cent of companies are primarily relying on increasing efficiency to achieve their sustainability goals, while 67 per cent plan on lowering energy and manufacturing costs from sustainable sources. This is where the opportunity lies for digital transformation partners like Publicis Sapient to help businesses reach their sustainability goals. BY R E B E CCA G I B SON A sustainable approach to sustainability “ We must develop solutions that primarily focus on improving efficiency and reducing costs”
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