ESG - How can your Workplace Deliver Sustainable Outcomes?

20 November 2023

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Sustainability today is a graver issue! Every business and institute brainstorm how their institution or organisation can contribute to sustainable productivity.

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Strategy is the king of sustainable commercial real estate!

Organisations, especially the non-service sectors such as manufacturing or mining enterprises, have real estate portfolio emissions that are almost zero as compared to their factory emissions. But when you compare to office-based businesses where desk work is paramount, the scope of harmful releases becomes predominant over other factors such as the carbon footprint. The harmful gases released through ACs, computers, and other electrical appliances count upon the total carbon footprint of a business house. If we talk about a commercial building, roughly 50% of the emissions come from the base build, and the remaining 50% comes from the businesses or tenants that use the building. And go ahead on a larger scale; it is estimated that circa 6% of global emissions are released from office buildings.

Living in a world where people are getting more conscious about environmental impacts, the focus has driven enormously toward Scope 3 emissions. Scope 3 emissions generally include- capital goods, transportation & distribution, business travel, employee commuting, and many others. Corporations are already asking for the levels of carbon reduction targets. Government bodies are aiming for zero carbon emissions in the near future. Therefore, this is a piece of sincere advice to all businesses to devise plans and strategies for carbon reduction.

Practical steps for organisations to work on this journey.

Many areas under the ESG bucket can be a task to focus on! Some critical classifications may include:

Carbon footprint reduction
Energy efficiency
Business ethics
Diversity and inclusion
Employee health and safety
Product safety

To achieve harmony and equilibrium towards sustainable development, the Value Reporting Foundation- a global non-profit organisation, has helped us by setting some standards. The foundation says- “The Standards identify the subset of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues most relevant to financial performance in each industry.”

Let’s get ahead on how you can deal with the carbon emission by your business house.

You, as a business enterprise, must begin with data collection.

Here’s how!

After determining the locale of your business, the next step is to ponder upon the data that’ll help measure your success.

Begin from where you are: The moment you magnify sustainability in your business, you must look at where your business stands in the present situation. Collect data like- workplace safety data, energy usage, or workplace diversity metrics. This will help you get on the right track.
Take up a plan to improve: Devise how your data collection process can improve and get you even more accurate results. Furthermore, find out how data reporting can be enhanced to make it more insightful and valuable.
Gauging the gaps: Once you have the records of where you are and where you want to be in sustainability, it will become easy for the business to identify the gaps and take up an action plan to fill them.

Benchmarking within your industry

The concept of industry benchmarking involves proximity between organisations belonging to the same niche or industry. For instance, a business made in the logistics sector will tend to have higher emissions of harmful gases rather than that of a much greener industry. Although the logistics business will do everything in its capacity to reduce its emission levels, it still ranks higher in terms of emission levels. Therefore, it is sensible to audit logistics with logistics and greener business with yet another greener business.

This way, it becomes easier to benchmark your business in the industry, analyse how it is performing towards sustainable growth, and understand your ESG position compared to your peers.

How a workplace partner can help

Workplace partners, like Studio DB, can do wonders for you to reduce your carbon footprint and analyse how your workplace decisions are affecting ESG sustainability. We can:

Help in surveying the estate footprint size of your business and suggest ways to optimise the effectiveness of reduced carbon levels.
We can help identify the best-suited location for your business, considering factors such as- building, position, access to natural light, and other environment-friendly resources.
We can design eco-friendly workspaces that support ESG aspects like diversity, inclusion, well-being, engagement, and retention.

If this excites you to better understand environment-friendly and ESG-supportive workplace practices, get in touch with us and discover our Office Carbon Calculator.