Need for Chief Sustainability Officer(CSO)?
There is no doubt that globally companies are accepting the fact that there is need to work on environmental and social issues and develop credible sustainability report disclosing information on the 3 pillars of sustainability. As companies mature and publish sustainability reports yearly, they feel the need to enhance their performance. Sustainability reporting cannot be undertaken in isolation, without any plan and strategy in place. Companies now believe that sustainability is now an important aspect of any corporate strategy as well as decision making on investment and operations etc. They understand that sustainability now needs to be integrated in the organization’s DNA, so that meaningful change can be brought.
Sustainability is now a boardroom agenda and chief executive officers are becoming answerable to the board on sustainability issues. These requirements have created a need for having Chief Sustainability Officer(CSO) for several corporates. 15 years back nobody would have heard of a position called chief sustainability officer. It was only in 2004 when we first heard about this when Dupont appointed its first CSO. Since then we have come a long way and now there are thousands of CSOs working across several corporates, industries, and sectors globally. As Sustainability report consultant, we believe that the role that CSO plays is highly important for companies to walk through a sustainable transformation journey.
So what does the role of CSO include? The role of the CSO covers wide mandate, spanning across a variety of issues related to sustainability that an organization faces. These include:
- Setting a long term sustainability strategy
- Identifying key performance indicators
- Ensuring KPIs are monitored regularly
- Making sure that the objectives are being met.
- Ensuring the companies are safeguarded for any sustainability issues and litigations as they are also expected to fully run a check on Environmental, Social, and Governance risks.
The CSOs are now challenging the concept that sustainability comes at a cost. Being a sustainability report consultant we do not doubt that CSO is very important for a company to set and achieve long-term sustainability targets. There are several CSOs pushing boundaries on sustainability while improving the bottom line for the organization. The cross-sector task and roles that CSOs who has to play provide in a better sight of the future as well as control of the presents. Therefore CSOs are becoming more and more important in the governance in an organization. CSOs bring visions passion and purpose to the organization and there will at the forefront of creating a future and transforming organizations to achieve a sustainable and equitable for all.
In our capacity as sustainability report consultant, we are interactive with several CSOs which has further cemented our belief that we must have CSOs if we need to achieve a sustainable future for all. If you are a CSO and need advice from sustainability report consultant, Please reach out to us at https://www.agilemea.com/
