MAKING THE CONNECTION Your guide to effective sustainability communications

Whether it’s engaging with employees to maximise results, with stakeholders to communicate progress or consumers to drive awareness and brand value, getting it right is crucial, and getting it wrong can be disastrous.

So, from strategy setting to fine-tuning individual campaigns, messaging can be the difference between being inspirational and being ignored.

So, to help you cut through comms complexity, we asked the experts from across the industry to share their top tips communications success.

Break down the language barrier

Internal sustainability initiatives can suffer from a lack of implementation or interest across multiple levels of the company. While the goal of a sustainability programme will remain the same, the way you engage different stakeholders can have a drastic impact, as HSBC’s senior manager for environmental programmes Sue Alexander explains.

The value to the Board might be the commercial benefit to the organisation. To provide evidence of work towards the

Sustainable Development Goals could be viewed in terms of a social return on investment. The value to the middle managers might be meeting cost reduction targets or ‘employee happiness’ scores. The value to the individual staff members might be personal interest in learning about environmental matters and a sense they are taking action to ‘save the planet’.

“You can share your same message in many different languages to your different recipients. Always talk in their language - make it simple for them to absorb. It’s easy to get stuck in our own acronyms, which won’t mean anything to people in a different sector of industry. Learn what language your audience uses and apply this to your messages.”

As the business case for sustainability expands, so must the ability to engage with different areas of the business and that means breaking down the language barrier.

Make it material, relevant and human

Relevance is king here, and that means making it relevant for your organisation and relevant for your stakeholders.

If you’re focusing on the material issues for your company then you’re already doing the former. The key then is linking that to the human motivations for those you are reaching out to and making it material for them too. So says GSK’s corporate responsibility engagement manager Hannah Green.

The key to keeping it relevant is keeping it aligned to what the business is there to do. GSK is a healthcare company and one of the

things that keeps a focus on sustainability alive is actually building on the links between climate and health. It would be a much harder job if we couldn’t make those links.

“You need to humanise your stories. You can get caught up in a lot of your reporting and data, but if you want to engage internally about it you need to take things down to an operational level, look at the people who are delivering stuff on the ground and understand their motivations and impacts. It’s a good way to engage.”

This point is especially important in areas like procurement and energy, where people failing to align with your sustainability strategy can impact its overall effectiveness.

Facts and figures do not always make a story

A key pillar in a sustainability communications strategy is often the sustainability report – a key tool for publishing the aims, goals and successes with the data to back it up. But, as WWF’s senior communications manager Holly McKinlay explains, facts and figures aren’t necessarily the best way to capture a wider audience.

The most mistakes I see are when it comes to messaging. People just putting out a list of facts and figures and technical information

without thought on how they might be received and who they might be received by.

“It’s always worth taking a step back to consider why you want to communicate your sustainability efforts in the first place and what you want the audience receiving them to think, feel and do with that information. Most audiences want to know what you are doing in a way that is easy to comprehend and what the return on the investment of their attention/money/custom is.”

While the numbers will almost certainly resonate in the boardroom and finance departments, for a wider audience – including employees and customers – it is the story of your sustainability journey that is most likely to make a lasting impression.

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Actions speak louder than words

When promoting your sustainability credentials to consumers, differentiating yourselves from the rest of your sector can give an immediate advantage. Making sustainability a key part of your message about what makes you different makes it a key reason for customers to choose you, as chemical firm Croda’s vice president of corporate sustainability Chris Sayner explains.

Consumers connect with brands and these connections can be very strong; consumers identify with their favourite brands. Consumer

companies nurture these connections to increase and protect the equity in their brands.

“Our ingredient portfolio is largely built on renewable raw materials, differentiating us from our peers, and this, coupled with the investments we have made in energy efficiency and renewable heat and power gives us a sustainable advantage.”

By making sustainability central to your ethos and proposition it places a value on it that others will value too, helping you win hearts, minds… and business.

Alignment with the bigger picture

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were introduced to tackle the world’s most pressing issues, and unsurprisingly these challenges have resonated with both boardrooms and consumers. Aligning your existing goals to the SDGs can be an effective way of amplifying your message, as CSR consultancy Beyond Business’s chief executive Elaine Cohen explains.

You need to look at the audience you are trying to engage with and there are different ways to target different groups. Mass consumers are

unlikely to engage directly with your sustainability report because it’s produced for your stakeholders, so if you want them interested you have to do it in a way where you’re not giving them a sustainability report but a reason to engage with the sustainability programme.

“The SDGs have really taken root with the business community much more quickly than most expected. Every company can reframe and refocus its efforts and objectives to align with the SDGs. Instead of companies focusing on their own operations, the SDGs tell them to start from what the world needs and then see what you can achieve from there. It is a revelation for some companies and it is starting to shift the needle on how companies view their role in society.”

Both the SDGs and the ratification of the Paris Agreement have heightened the public’s awareness of climate change and therefore, crafting both your strategy and your story around these global frameworks can make a real difference.

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Bad news travels fast, so be faster

Unfortunately, communications isn’t always about the positive, sometimes it’s about handling the negative, especially in the digital age where news travels instantly and everywhere. But, it’s far better to be part of the conversation than excluded from it, so you can respond in real time, with real answers to help manage any social media ‘snowball effect’. Companies need to embrace transparency and engage openly and honestly, as Croda’s Sayner explains.

Social media, NGOs and blogs ensure that bad news travels fast and globally. We live in a completely different time compared with

pre-internet. Damage to brand equity via social media can be immediate and long lasting.

“All of this brings sustainability right to the forefront of consumer businesses. I would argue it contributes to a more conservative, risk-averse approach. It drives good behaviour, creative thinking and very strong sustainability programmes in some major consumer companies. It has brought another dimension to relationships, far from adversarial, sustainability is neutral territory with shared, common goals.”

A risk-averse approach will ensure that your firm isn’t grabbing headlines for the wrong reasons, but it also lessens the likelihood of a sustainability story from spreading across social media. Bold targets make better stories and will help to keep tongues wagging.

Be bold – start a conversation

The rise of social media has made communication with stakeholders constant and real-time. This offers a huge opportunity to shift the exchange from a one-way push to a genuine conversation. Fostering this kind of relationship will go a long way to increase trust levels and, coupled with transparency, dispel any greenwash suspicions. Understanding the benefits of an open and honest flow allows companies to be bolder when communicating, WWF’s McKinlay explains.

I’d like companies to be bolder in their sustainability communications, to take risks. I think in recent years there has been reluctance

in case of being accused of ‘greenwashing’ but if you have a robust, tangible sustainability programme and you are making an impact then it should be communicated.

“But, not just in an annual report or on the website, in more innovative ways in the online and offline space and working with partners to communicate to a broader range of audiences. I think all audiences in one way or another want to receive the message you are putting out in a clear and concise manner.”

Yes, your product or service can win over customers, but the ambition behind your message can also attract the attention of key stakeholders, and with new communication channels available, it’s time to be bold and start a conversation.

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