La durabilité sociale expliquée
Dans l'environnement actuel des entreprises, qui évolue rapidement, le concept de durabilité a pris une place prépondérante dans tous les domaines. Pourtant, alors que les discussions portent essentiellement sur l'empreinte carbone et les rendements trimestriels, l'élément humain - la durabilité sociale - est tout aussi crucial pour la longévité et le succès.
Modern corporate sustainability is built upon the three interconnected dimensions – environment, economy and society. This is often summarised as “people, profit and planet”. This is reiterated in sustainability reporting standards including GSE et CSRD.
And, while environmental sustainability (protecting nature) and economic sustainability (ensuring commercial viability) have relatively obvious metrics, social sustainability often receives less attention. That does not make it any less crucial to sustainable development. In fact, many of the Objectifs du Millénaire pour le développement des Nations unies directly address social sustainability including goals focusing on poverty eradication (SDG 1), ensuring healthy lives (SDG 3), achieving quality education (SDG 4), promoting gender equality (SDG 5), and fostering decent work (SDG 8).
What is Social Sustainability?
Social Sustainability is defined by the UN as a measure of human welfare with the objective to secure people’s socio-culture and spiritual needs in an equitable way. In business, this involves identifying and managing the positive and negative impacts a business has on people. This extends across employees, customers, workers and local communities across the value chain. The scope of social sustainability is wide ranging and addresses numerous issues aimed at securing the necessities of people and fostering well-being.
- Human Rights and Safety: Protecting human rights, health and safety and resolving racism and discrimination.
- Fairness and Justice: Equal opportunities, fair labour practices, reducing gender bias and addressing issues like harassment.
- Welfare and Development: Education, work-life balance, community development, poverty alleviation, healthcare, and addressing the well-being of children and the elderly.
Why is Social Sustainability Important to Business and Society?
Social Sustainability is essential because its core goal is enabling communities and societies to thrive in a healthy, fair, and equal manner. For businesses, focusing on this aspect ensures long term viability.
- Securing a license of operate: Widespread social problems including poverty and inequality can severely hamper business operations.
- Driving economic performance: When societies struggle, so do businesses. Therefore bolstering efforts to achieve social sustainability help secure long-term economic growth
- Operational advantages: Strong social practices help to retain and attract business partners, increase employee loyalty and morale and boost company productivity. It can also improve company-community relations thus reducing risk management issues.
- Innovation and Markets: Social efforts can unlock new markets and drive innovation for new products or service lines
Ultimately, efforts that prioritize social equity ensure that development is not only focused on economic growth and the environment, but also on the people that make it all happen.
Sustainability for Society - The Bottom Line
Environmental and Economic sustainability often take center stage for businesses attempting to improve their practices in a responsible way. However, the social side of sustainability is often overlooked. Ensuring the well being and equity of the people and communities that businesses impact is essential to their success in sustainability.
Au Carbon Complete, we address sustainability from all angles to find solutions that address the complete picture. Do you have any pressing questions about how to manage your company’s sustainability? We’d be happy to converse with you about improving your impact – socially, environmentally and economically.
