Why a sustainability roadmap with implementation timelines is critical
Organisations have often tried to begin reporting on complex sustainability areas without addressing their business's operational aspects, leading to poor reporting and implementation.
For many organisations, implementing their sustainability strategy involves achieving various organisational targets.
These targets could include climate-related ambitions such as transitioning to greener energy sources and reducing emissions. It could also involve developing greener products, effective risk management, and reducing waste.
These goals will mean different things to different organisations, depending on their industry, and will require a tailored implementation approach to be achieved.
Therefore, once an organisation has settled the conversation on its 'why' for sustainability or understood the business case for embracing sustainability, it embeds it within its strategy and purpose and must translate that into action on the ground.
Getting to the 'what' is where most organisations get overwhelmed and stretched, which is where an implementation roadmap with clearly defined timelines and actions for each sustainability goal is essential.
Sustainability is a journey, and with this understanding, organisations should be willing to set the proper milestones on that journey.
The benefits of developing an implementation roadmap include the following.
A roadmap helps to break down the goals into specific daily tasks or bite-sized smaller goals for action by the respective teams across an organisation. It gives the internal teams clarity on what actions are needed today while staying focused on the long-term ambition.
Organisations have often tried to begin reporting on complex sustainability areas without addressing their business's operational aspects, leading to poor reporting and implementation.
This poor reporting happens because organisations often need to remember that reporting is an outcome of what is occurring within.
Secondly, organisations can hold themselves accountable by including timelines in the roadmap. The governance team can assess how well the organisation is doing at short intervals rather than having silence from management and then finding out later that only a little has been done when the overall goal is assessed.
Therefore, having clear timelines prevents the risk of inaction by those responsible for driving the sustainability implementation in the organisation.
For example, setting climate goals to reduce emissions can be the overall ambition, broken down into smaller goals with timelines such as performing a baseline exercise, emissions inventory exercise for scopes 1, 2 and 3, developing transition strategies and mobilising the required financing for these exercises.
Akinyemi Awodumila is a Partner at Deloitte East Africa. He is an author who writes and speaks widely on corporate reporting topics.
