Actually working with the SDGs
How do you breathe life into 17 majestic goals and 169 specific targets – and make them a normal part of your everyday existence as a company? We at Urgent.Agency tried to talk a little less and do more, using the SDGs as outset – not as a checklist.
Reading time:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are popping up everywhere in corporate communication. From climate action and clean energy to gender equality and sustainable cities the SDGs present a comprehensive and elaborate ambition for a better tomorrow. Today, however, with only 10 years remaining to reach the ambitious goals of 2030, we are far from operating at the speed and scale required to reach them.
The world leaders concluded the 2019 SDG Summit by calling for a Decade of Action, asking all sectors of society to mobilize. But how do we answer the call? How do we, as an SME (Small and medium-sized enterprise), actively and effectively contribute to the SDGs?
In the following we share our experiences working with the SDGs as a creative agency with offices in Copenhagen and Oslo.
Get started
Use the SDGs as a starting point for examining your own business
Analyse and understand your own CO2e emissions
Engage your co-workers in mapping challenges and opportunities in your core business
Identify where you have the opportunity to create the most impact
Get started – it is better to do something than nothing at all
The why and the how
Increasingly, the SDGs are all the rage, popping up all around us. The colourful boxes representing each Goal (designed by Trollbäck+company) are omnipresent, brightening up keynotes, office mail signatures, corporate reports and websites. Intended to motivate ‘’social and sustainable change by 2030,’’ there is still a glaring contrast between good intentions and real action in the corporate world. If not out of ill will, then what? Is there simply a basic and practical need to design a practical how-to approach to SDG implementation? Does the why need a how?
Where we're at
Many companies use the SGDs in their external communication but lack strategies for actually working with them. In a recent PWC analysis of 729 companies across 21 territories and 6 broad industry groups, seven out of ten companies use the SDGs when they communicate, but only a fifth actually have any type of a meaningful strategy for working with them.
Transparency, not perfection
Looking into the practical implementation of the how of it all, it quickly becomes apparent that it is both difficult and cumbersome which may explain why so few of us manage to truly practice what we preach. It requires a quite thorough investigation and understanding of one's own business seen through the wide framework of the SDGs in order to create meaningful performance indicators all the while remaining transparent. By transparent we mean being open and honest about the successes and failures of the process.
Rather than putting the symbol for goal 14, Life below water, in all of our public communication – and thereby simplifying and exaggerating our effort in this particular area – as an agency, however, we could legitimately show all the positive things we have done with regards to plastic consumption. But in the spirit of full disclosure, we would also have to be open about our less thoughtful actions – such as buying three (highly entertaining) plastic shark helium balloons for our office party! In other words an honest SDG profile, warts and all. And in any case, it’s just quite complex to link the many goals, however sympathetic, to what we do on a Monday afternoon in an office in Copenhagen before picking up the kids. You might end up doing nothing.
Cherry picking
What very often happens with the SDGs is cherry picking: companies pick the ones they like – and might already live up to – and check the boxes. Of the seventeen SDGs, only seven generally get any attention from companies. Life Below Water (SDG14), Zero Hunger (SDG2) and No Poverty (SDG1) tend to go unmentioned by most. Omitting some of the goals from the company's efforts is not inherently bad, but doing as some companies do, showing all of the goals in their communication without having any strategies of working with any of them, is. There has to be a principled prioritisation based on the capabilities and potential impact of the organisation. And if working with the SDGs does not change behaviour, it is nothing more than lip service. Useless at best, undermining the entire idea at worst.
Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG8) is the most commonly mentioned goal among large businesses, maybe unsurprisingly as the latter part of it is central to most companies' regular strategies and objectives anyway. The second most mentioned goal is Climate Action (SDG13) in reference to the company’s emission reductions, but since emission reductions is a prerequisite for reaching many of the other Goals, this could indicate a misinterpretation of the meaning of the goal – and could therefore be indicative of a shallow engagement with the SDGs. It is not surprising that these two goals are prioritised by so many, but it does evoke the sense that it might stem more from prior engagements, misunderstandings or pure blue-washing than from serious commitment to solving the issues the goals represent.
Where do the SDGs come from?
To make sense of the goals we have to be aware of their purpose. They were to replace the Millennium Development Goals, which means that they are targeted primarily at nation states. Because of this scope, many of the targets included in the SDGs are relevant for large transnational businesses, businesses operating in countries with lower welfare standards as compared to the Nordic countries without, for example, access to healthcare or clean drinking water. Many of the SDGs that relate to social issues have goals and targets that, if translated into policy, would even be viewed as regressive in the context of the Nordic countries.
In PWC’s study “Make it your business: Engaging with the Sustainable Development Goals” companies ranked SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth) as the SDG they have the greatest impact on and that offers them the greatest business opportunity.
From semantics to strategy to action
Working with the SDGs in a meaningful way means making the SDGs central to the business, both internally and externally. This means actively making sure that the goals you set become an integral part of the business strategy and that there are clear structures for feedback from the organisation on how your work helps reach those targets.
An example could be to build a reporting system, making explaining relation to the SDGs a compulsory part when legitimising key decisions in the work process of any project – or making it a recurring anchor point in dialogue and assessment within the organisation. Absolutely key is to avoid it becoming merely a semantic exercise where its being talked about without it affecting the day-to-day operations.
How to actually do it
While figuring out what we could do in our own world of Urgent.Agency, we started going through the suggested actions of the SDG. It quickly became clear that the climate crisis is the central and overarching issue when it comes to sustainability. We already knew that cutting our emissions and maybe paying to get our emissions offset might eventually come up, but we did not know that zero greenhouse gas emissions is explicitly mentioned as a requirement to reach 12 out of the 17 goals. The fact is that climate change affects almost all of the other goals!
To move forward we set up a fairly simple internal process. We had a few team members prepare presentations about the SDG ambition. From this backdrop, the entire team was asked to consider ways to address climate change in our everyday at the office. This proved to be invaluable. Not only did it help us develop specific KPIs with clear guidelines that we are now working with, it also made us adapt the goals to our own overall strategy and company culture. And finally, it turned out to be an inspiring process, making all of us more aware of our emissions and what we can do about them.
So what was the outcome? Instead of working with specific goals we developed a strategy for incorporating sustainable development into our own world – and decided to divide our sustainability effort into two parts. One with a plan to work with CO2e emissions exclusively and secondly a framework for how to tailor sustainability ambitions to our own specific context. Rather than trying to directly apply the SDGs, they became a starting point from which to examine our own practice.
For us this has meant formulating our own crosscutting commitments tailored to our own business, practice and skill-sets. The entire commitment, including an action plan for 2020 can be found here. The main issues is reducing our own CO2 emissions, notably rethinking how we move (less flying), what we buy (changing our diet to vegetarian food) and how we work (our energy use). But we have also committed ourselves to engaging our clients in becoming more sustainable. While it remains to be seen how much impact this will have, we are positive that our own process so far has been a great beginning – and one that we can recommend.
Bluewashing’ – pretending to take action
The terms ‘’Bluewashing’’ or ‘’SDG-washing’’ refers to when companies or organisations exaggerate their relationship to the UN, its work and programmes, playing with the infamous concept greenwashing. Participation in The United Nations Global Compact (UNGC), a voluntary programme encouraging businesses to act responsibly and sustainably, has among critics become synonymous with bluewashing. For a programme that is proposed to be ‘uniting business for a better world’ it can be a bit discouraging to learn that members of the program actually perform worse than non-members.
We are now working to see if we can generalize this method to help other companies do the same. We are currently collaborating with the startup Climaider who has developed methods and tools for calculating businesses’ CO2e emissions on standardizing a method for businesses to work with and reduce direct CO2e emissions stemming from the company’s activities.
You will be hearing much more about this in the coming months.
Read our full Urgent.Commitment here.
Actually working with the SDGs
How do you breathe life into 17 majestic goals and 169 specific targets – and make them a normal part of your everyday existence as a company? We at Urgent.Agency tried to talk a little less and do more, using the SDGs as outset – not as a checklist.
Reading time:
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are popping up everywhere in corporate communication. From climate action and clean energy to gender equality and sustainable cities the SDGs present a comprehensive and elaborate ambition for a better tomorrow. Today, however, with only 10 years remaining to reach the ambitious goals of 2030, we are far from operating at the speed and scale required to reach them.
The world leaders concluded the 2019 SDG Summit by calling for a Decade of Action, asking all sectors of society to mobilize. But how do we answer the call? How do we, as an SME (Small and medium-sized enterprise), actively and effectively contribute to the SDGs?
In the following we share our experiences working with the SDGs as a creative agency with offices in Copenhagen and Oslo.
Get started
Use the SDGs as a starting point for examining your own business
Analyse and understand your own CO2e emissions
Engage your co-workers in mapping challenges and opportunities in your core business
Identify where you have the opportunity to create the most impact
Get started – it is better to do something than nothing at all
The why and the how
Increasingly, the SDGs are all the rage, popping up all around us. The colourful boxes representing each Goal (designed by Trollbäck+company) are omnipresent, brightening up keynotes, office mail signatures, corporate reports and websites. Intended to motivate ‘’social and sustainable change by 2030,’’ there is still a glaring contrast between good intentions and real action in the corporate world. If not out of ill will, then what? Is there simply a basic and practical need to design a practical how-to approach to SDG implementation? Does the why need a how?
Transparency, not perfection
Looking into the practical implementation of the how of it all, it quickly becomes apparent that it is both difficult and cumbersome which may explain why so few of us manage to truly practice what we preach. It requires a quite thorough investigation and understanding of one's own business seen through the wide framework of the SDGs in order to create meaningful performance indicators all the while remaining transparent. By transparent we mean being open and honest about the successes and failures of the process.
Rather than putting the symbol for goal 14, Life below water, in all of our public communication – and thereby simplifying and exaggerating our effort in this particular area – as an agency, however, we could legitimately show all the positive things we have done with regards to plastic consumption. But in the spirit of full disclosure, we would also have to be open about our less thoughtful actions – such as buying three (highly entertaining) plastic shark helium balloons for our office party! In other words an honest SDG profile, warts and all. And in any case, it’s just quite complex to link the many goals, however sympathetic, to what we do on a Monday afternoon in an office in Copenhagen before picking up the kids. You might end up doing nothing.
Cherry picking
What very often happens with the SDGs is cherry picking: companies pick the ones they like – and might already live up to – and check the boxes. Of the seventeen SDGs, only seven generally get any attention from companies. Life Below Water (SDG14), Zero Hunger (SDG2) and No Poverty (SDG1) tend to go unmentioned by most. Omitting some of the goals from the company's efforts is not inherently bad, but doing as some companies do, showing all of the goals in their communication without having any strategies of working with any of them, is. There has to be a principled prioritisation based on the capabilities and potential impact of the organisation. And if working with the SDGs does not change behaviour, it is nothing more than lip service. Useless at best, undermining the entire idea at worst.
Decent Work and Economic Growth (SDG8) is the most commonly mentioned goal among large businesses, maybe unsurprisingly as the latter part of it is central to most companies' regular strategies and objectives anyway. The second most mentioned goal is Climate Action (SDG13) in reference to the company’s emission reductions, but since emission reductions is a prerequisite for reaching many of the other Goals, this could indicate a misinterpretation of the meaning of the goal – and could therefore be indicative of a shallow engagement with the SDGs. It is not surprising that these two goals are prioritised by so many, but it does evoke the sense that it might stem more from prior engagements, misunderstandings or pure blue-washing than from serious commitment to solving the issues the goals represent.
In PWC’s study “Make it your business: Engaging with the Sustainable Development Goals” companies ranked SDG 8 (Decent work and economic growth) as the SDG they have the greatest impact on and that offers them the greatest business opportunity.
From semantics to strategy to action
Working with the SDGs in a meaningful way means making the SDGs central to the business, both internally and externally. This means actively making sure that the goals you set become an integral part of the business strategy and that there are clear structures for feedback from the organisation on how your work helps reach those targets.
An example could be to build a reporting system, making explaining relation to the SDGs a compulsory part when legitimising key decisions in the work process of any project – or making it a recurring anchor point in dialogue and assessment within the organisation. Absolutely key is to avoid it becoming merely a semantic exercise where its being talked about without it affecting the day-to-day operations.
How to actually do it
While figuring out what we could do in our own world of Urgent.Agency, we started going through the suggested actions of the SDG. It quickly became clear that the climate crisis is the central and overarching issue when it comes to sustainability. We already knew that cutting our emissions and maybe paying to get our emissions offset might eventually come up, but we did not know that zero greenhouse gas emissions is explicitly mentioned as a requirement to reach 12 out of the 17 goals. The fact is that climate change affects almost all of the other goals!
To move forward we set up a fairly simple internal process. We had a few team members prepare presentations about the SDG ambition. From this backdrop, the entire team was asked to consider ways to address climate change in our everyday at the office. This proved to be invaluable. Not only did it help us develop specific KPIs with clear guidelines that we are now working with, it also made us adapt the goals to our own overall strategy and company culture. And finally, it turned out to be an inspiring process, making all of us more aware of our emissions and what we can do about them.
So what was the outcome? Instead of working with specific goals we developed a strategy for incorporating sustainable development into our own world – and decided to divide our sustainability effort into two parts. One with a plan to work with CO2e emissions exclusively and secondly a framework for how to tailor sustainability ambitions to our own specific context. Rather than trying to directly apply the SDGs, they became a starting point from which to examine our own practice.
For us this has meant formulating our own crosscutting commitments tailored to our own business, practice and skill-sets. The entire commitment, including an action plan for 2020 can be found here. The main issues is reducing our own CO2 emissions, notably rethinking how we move (less flying), what we buy (changing our diet to vegetarian food) and how we work (our energy use). But we have also committed ourselves to engaging our clients in becoming more sustainable. While it remains to be seen how much impact this will have, we are positive that our own process so far has been a great beginning – and one that we can recommend.
We are now working to see if we can generalize this method to help other companies do the same. We are currently collaborating with the startup Rensti who has developed methods and tools for calculating businesses’ CO2e emissions on standardizing a method for businesses to work with and reduce direct CO2e emissions stemming from the company’s activities.
You will be hearing much more about this in the coming months.
Read our full Urgent.Commitment here.