Extreme weather, droughts, fires, a shortage of clean water, and an increasingly short deadline to do anything about it shout from the pages of magazines. According to a recent Google Cloud poll performed by The Harris Poll, the great majority of CEOs consider sustainability as a significant business aim. It was also shown that the majority of people do not track their development over time. This is a dilemma since you can’t desire long-term success. Internally and across your supply chain, you must take steps to attain it, and if you aren’t tracking your progress (or lack thereof), it’s all talk.
To gain a comprehensive picture of the sustainability concerns that firms are experiencing, Google Cloud polled 1,491 C-level executives or vice presidents in 16 countries. The good news is that 80% of respondents thought their organization was doing a good job in terms of sustainability, which is fantastic. They then inquired as to how they were tracking their development. There were some more disturbing comments in this section of the study. “The study revealed a disturbing disparity between how well businesses believe they’re performing and how correctly they can evaluate it.” In a blog post describing the findings, Justin Keeble, managing director of global sustainability at Google Cloud, wrote, “Only 36% of respondents said their organizations have measurement tools in place to quantify their sustainability efforts, and only 17% are using those measurements to optimize based on results.”
Executives answering to poll questions were surprisingly honest about the absence of measurement and what it signifies, with 58 percent claiming “green hypocrisy” in their firms and nearly two-thirds doubting their organizations’ commitment to this sort of endeavor. Greenwashing is a word for when corporations talk the talk about sustainability but don’t walk the walk. Surprisingly, 4% of respondents said their firms had made no attempt to promote sustainability. That implies 96% do, but there are numerous more choices, such as implementing sustainable workplace practices, partnering with green vendors, or implementing a recycling program.
There is still cause to be optimistic, since respondents believe that sustainability and comprehensive ESG (environmental, social, and governance) activities lead to improved business outcomes, with 74% believing that sustainability may lead to significant business reforms. The question is how to bridge the gap between true desire and the measuring challenge. It’s a technological issue, according to Google. “With 91 percent of respondents agreeing that ‘technology makes it possible for our organization to be more sustainable,’ technology innovation is the top utility executives believe will impact the sustainable growth of their organization and the sustainability of the planet at large,” the company wrote in the full report.
