April 23, 2021

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Sustainability

How businesses can work towards a more sustainable future

SHP speaks to David Picton, newly appointed SVP for Sustainability at Alcumus, about how businesses should approach sustainability, why it’s important and what the biggest sustainability challenges are at present.

David Picton

David Picton has a diverse career, proving him with the opportunity to experience and tackle some fascinating operational and strategic issues in many different industry sectors. His background is perhaps a little different – as it merges some hard-won commercial and industry knowledge with deep leadership expertise, including battlefield combat and peace-keeping operations.

David led Director and Executive roles in the technology, media, infrastructure, and public sectors for fourteen years, but served for 20 years before that as a Royal Air Force officer – leaving as a Wing Commander. Most recently, he founded and managed an independent advisory practice to help organisations get more out of their projects, teams and people.

As a Chief Sustainability Officer, he achieved the Queen’s Enterprise Award; as an Operations Director, he Sky’s customer supply chain and integrated Amstrad’s production operations; as a technology Solutions Director, he drove European sales growth for Motorola. Along the way, he has also managed to build on his initial Earth Sciences degree with an MBA and an international strategy MA.

SHP caught up with David a few months into his new role as SVP for Sustainability at Alcumus…

In your own words, what is sustainability and what does it cover?

David Picton (DP): “Whether we call it an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) approach or Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), it’s Common Sense Really – setting out a programme of policies, initiatives and targets to run your business responsibly, with positive impacts on society, ethical behaviours and minimal (or zero) impact on the environment. In essence, it covers the operational details of that approach across the economic, environmental and social aspects of your organisation that matter most to your stakeholders – your customers, your people, your suppliers and the communities around your operations. When done well, it should set a challenging balance that changes behaviours for commercial benefit – the 3 CBs.”

What advice would you give to businesses looking to focus on their sustainability? Where should they start?

(DP): “They should absolutely start by finding out ‘what matters’ to their key stakeholders – what we call a materiality analysis. They should then align that with an understanding of the aspects (of the environment, society and the economy) they have an impact on – and what those impacts are. They should learn about sustainability and how its thinking can be applied in their sector, they should identify their most pressing priorities for action, focus their efforts on improving them and try out some actions. For me, that spells out LIFT – Learn, Identify, Focus and Try – and they should then go round the loop again and again, as they learn more and more about how to build more sustainable (longer-lasting) practices and approaches.”

Do you think employees (and the public more generally) are now more aware/interested in how sustainable their employer is and has this changed the outlook on sustainability for employers?

(DP): “Absolutely – there are almost countless studies and statistics out there, linking consumer choices, employee opinions, investor decisions, media coverage and governmental policies to the sustainability performance of companies, local authorities, non-profit organisations and many other bodies. It’s becoming essential for the decision-makers at those organisations to recognise that doing well and doing good now go hand in hand, and to implement policies that bring that to life. Employers who pay mere lip-service to that will be increasingly exposed – and rightly so – in their retention and recruitment experiences, in their sales figures and in their brand reputation. But, this is also a hugely positive opportunity for employers to engage with their people and to involve them in shaping those more sustainable journeys.”

What’s the greatest issue facing businesses sustainability currently?

(DP): “From business to business, the specific issues affecting their sector or nature of operations will differ, and opinions will always be subjective – which is why their objective materiality analysis will be the first place to start. For me, the biggest ‘general’ sustainability issue is one of businesses failing to link their sustainability approach to their very purpose – the reason they are in business at all – and making it central to what they do, and how they do it. Focusing only on green issues, dismissing the agenda as fanatical campaigning or seeing it as ‘something separate that happens over there’ with an army of clipboard-wielding snitches – all of these traps will miss the point. Sustainability has to be balanced across social, economic and environmental issues and baked into purpose, profit, people and product, if it is to unleash the power of responsible business.”

You’ve just been appointed SVP at Alcumus, what are you hoping to achieve in this role?

(DP): “This is a great role to tackle – I’m very lucky – and I want to achieve at least three things initially. First, I’d like to build on the great products and people that Alcumus already has, to help our Enterprise and SME customers measure and manage their operations in ever-more responsible ways. Second, I’d like to forge strong mutual partnerships that drive deeper understanding of the risks and opportunities in sustainability – leading directly to actions and progress that will inspire businesses to do even more, with clear returns for their customers and their people. Third, I’d like to help Alcumus to become widely acknowledged as a sustainability thought-leader, creating not only better workplaces, but more responsible ones too – never satisfied, never complacent and never finished.”

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Nigel Dupree
Nigel Dupree
2 years ago

So, is it “learned helplessness” or apathy underpinning just carrying-on regardless being there like, you know, presenteeism ? How close are we to establishing a basic set of “Given Condition & environment” for any Human Resources to function sustainably let alone optimally, over time ? Clearly functional human resources perform and are at least 20% more productive when not just ‘working to live’ so, are employers going to be solely dependent on the new nudge campaign the “Decade of Health” or, actually recognise and remove the common stressors from poor datlighting to inaccessible display screen equipment as common barriers to… Read more »