Business leaders have made environmental sustainability a top 10 priority. Investors, employees, regulators and others push companies to think about how they can combat and address climate change.
According to Gartner’s annual CEO and Senior Business Executive Survey (2015-2016), environmental sustainability topped the list of top 10 priorities for CEOs for the first time since the survey’s inception. It jumped to 8th place from 14th and 20th in 2015, and it is now at the top of the list. The survey was completed between July 2021 – December 2021 by more than 400 senior executives in various industries.
According to respondents, the survey found that environmental sustainability was a “competitive differenceiator”. Seventy four percent of CEOs indicated that increasing their environmental sustainability is a key competitive differentiator. Governance, governance and social issuesInvestors will be attracted by your efforts.
Kristin Moyer (distinguished vice president and analyst at Gartner) stated that CEOs want investors to have better profit returns and growth in revenues while also driving social and environmental change. ESG is an attractive way for CEOs and talent to attract investors, customers, and employees.
Indeed, investors are behind the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s. Proposed climate risk disclosure ruleThe rule would require reporting on climate-related risk and greenhouse gas emissions to be mandatory. A flood of interest from stakeholders led to the extension of the comment period for this rule to June 17.
Despite this, Proposed SEC ruleAlthough it is not a reason for businesses to be interested in sustainability, Moyer said that it does increase the pressure on companies to “solidify” their processes for identifying climate risks and opportunities.
However, CEOs and other senior business leaders are facing challenges in setting and meeting sustainability goals as environmental sustainability efforts gain more momentum.
After significant interest from stakeholders the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed regulation on climate risk disclosure was extended to June 17 due to prolonged comment periods.
Environmental sustainability challenges
Moyer stated that compliance, employee resistance to change, and supply chain engagement were the three biggest obstacles to the development of sustainability programs. She also noted that data limitation and IT are other challenges.
Sustainability executives spend “inordinate amount of time” searching for the information they need. Programs that focus on sustainability often start with spreadsheets. Moyer stated that spreadsheets are inexpensive, but they’re also very low-quality.
IBM’s annual CEO is indeed impressive. Survey51% of CEOs pointed out that they lack data insights and uncertain return on investment. Technological barriersThey pose significant challenges for their sustainability efforts.
Sustainability is a business change, and every business change ends up with all sorts of challenges. Kristin Moyer Gartner, distinguished vice president and analyst
John Granger, senior vice-president of IBM Consulting, stated in a press release that “CEOs are leading in one of the most complex environments of all time, including war and inflation, talent shortages, and the COVID-19 healthcare crisis.” “Despite these challenges, they don’t take their foot off the gas when referring to sustainability. More people now rank it as one of their top priorities. Many people don’t realize the power of data and technology to bridge the gap between strategy and impact.
Moyer stated that business environmental sustainability and programs related to governance, environmental, and social issues require consistent, timely, and detailed data. This means that companies must invest in the “ESG information identification, collection, and quality assurance process.”
Companies can create an executive committee to provide oversight, coordination and oversight to help prevent fragmented data collection.
Moyer stated that sustainability is a business transformative process and that every business transformation will have its own challenges. “The most important thing to remember is that sustainability is a long term transition. Progress won’t be linear; business change is never linear.”
Makenzie Holland works as a news reporter covering big tech and federal regulations. Before joining TechTarget she was a general journalist for the Wilmington StarNews and a crime and education reporter at the Wabash Plain Dealer.
