Social

Making social sustainability core to your business strategy means you recognize the value of relationships with your organization’s internal and external stakeholders. It is about assessing potential harms, needs, and desires of the individuals, companies, and communities you work with, in the context of how those things influence your ability to do business. It is also about making positive, proactive contributions toward human development and well-being so that your business is able to thrive.

By pursuing positive social outcomes, you can improve quality of life for employees, suppliers’ workforce, customers, consumers, and citizens. This in turn improves operational, reputational, and social performance. And that has real value, even if it’s not always possible to calculate a precise ROI.

Studies show that healthy, actively engaged employees make better, more productive workers. Requiring suppliers to attend to the well-being of workers in your supply chain protects reputation and improves productivity. Attention to customer and consumer needs delights. And, when you are committed to the local community’s needs, your business will be rewarded as a valued corporate citizen. Social sustainability gives rise to a healthy social license to operate, product loyalty, and word-of-mouth advertising.

What will I learn in this section?

There are many topics under the umbrella of social sustainability. After you investigate the impacts your company has on people and society, explore the topics most relevant to your areas of impact. Or explore all of the social key topics to brainstorm where you have impacts that might not be readily apparent. Either way, social sustainability topics will reveal areas where you can improve business strategy, management, operations, programs, and policies. Then you can focus on specific projects in those areas to improve performance.

Take a moment to look at the list of topics in the left navigation to learn what is covered in this section.