Sustainable Development refers to economic development that meets the needs of the present generations without compromising the needs of future generations. Sustainable development requires economic, environmental and social issues to be incorporated into decision making processes.
Increasingly companies are applying the philosophies of sustainable development to their businesses - ensuring that their businesses develop profitably, but not an unacceptable cost to the environment or society. PAIA Consulting has worked with a number of companies helping develop and implement sustainable development strategies to their businesses.

Corporate Policy
We have worked with a number of companies helping them develop a corporate policy for sustainable development. We can help bring an external viewpoint, experience from other sectors/ companies or just act as a sounding board to help develop, or build on, a policy. We have also worked with a number of companies helping implement the policy into action.

Indicators
It can be difficult to measure corporate progress towards sustainable development – how do you know if you are improving? How do others know if you are moving towards sustainable development? Many companies use a range of indicators to measure improvements. We have carried out a review of sustainable development indicators, looking at what indicators companies use and working with companies to identify the most appropriate indicators for their individual business.

Awareness Raising
Sustainable development requires the commitment and involvement of staff and key stakeholders. Awareness raising can be a key way to raise the profile of sustainability and is especially useful to take on board staff issues. The method of awareness raising should be focused on the appropriate means to the corporation, but may involve news bulletins, intranet, briefing sessions, champions. To get full buy in from staff it is advisable to make communication two-way, enabling staff to feed back their issues, build ownership. Most of the best ideas for sustainable development will probably come from staff, providing the channel for them to suggest ideas and take action can be invaluable.

We have worked closely with companies advising on, and implementing a range of awareness raising actions. Most of these relationships have been ongoing for several years, adapting the method to the changing circumstances.

Stakeholder Engagement
Most company’s commitment to sustainable development involves some level of stakeholder engagement. Central to the ethos of sustainable development is to consider those that our business affects. This may range from local communities through to the shareholders and employees. Each group is likely to have different requirements, and be affected in different ways. Our past experience has found that by engaging key stakeholders many of the issues can be jointly understood and compromises found. An open approach and engagement can help avoid issues over planning permission, delays and adverse publicity.

We have worked with a number of companies on stakeholder engagement. The nature of this work has varied between companies, depending on the local situation, and requirements. It may involve working together to find potential solutions, running seminars, through to risk communication. This work has included working with Shell in the UK on risk communication.

Reporting
One way to communicate developments towards sustainability is through reporting. This may be via the web or paper reports. Often stakeholders request information regarding sustainability issues and it can be useful to have this information readily to hand. We have worked with several companies on environmental reporting. Again, the exact nature of the work has depending on the individual client’s requirements and has ranged from reviewing final reports through to designing, writing and verifying reports. We have also reviewed several environmental reports to identify what represents best practice and provide training on environmental reporting.

Benchmarking
We have carried out a number of projects benchmarking companies against others in their sector/ region or more broadly. Benchmarking can be a useful tool to assess what is standard practice and what represents best practice. Benchmarking can range from a simple survey based on readily available information (websites, reports) through to more detailed benchmarking based on our experience with other companies, sectors and telephone calls/ meetings with contacts to benchmark a specific issue.

Examples of relevant clients
TXU Europe
Railtrack
British Telecom
Smith and Nephew