Creating connection: Inside sustainability communications

Bladonmore’s David Willans discusses the importance of connecting sustainability to peoples’ work internally and the real world externally with Susan Jackson. Susan is a trained chemical engineer, who leads BASF’s North American sustainability work and external/internal communications for its Performance Materials business. She also chairs the American Chemistry Council’s Plastic Makers Initiative, where she works with peers to help advance sustainability and the industry.
Why do sustainability communications matter?
Sustainability communications matter because they connect everyone’s work, providing clarity and building momentum. That connection matters – without it, people are so focused on their roles or their part of sustainability that they can easily become siloed. By connecting everyone’s work to the bigger picture it gives people’s work more meaning and provides clarity on where to focus that, in the end, helps the business move forward faster.
What if the role wasn’t there?
If no-one was doing sustainability communications, the stories about what we’re doing on sustainability wouldn’t be found and shared. Our customers wouldn’t know how our sustainability work benefits them, and our employees wouldn’t understand both the positive impact we’re having and how to play their part. We’d also miss out on the benefits that come from connecting the work we’re doing internally with the changes that are happening in the outside world on different environmental and societal issues.
How important is internal sustainability communications?
It’s essential. Five, ten years ago it would have been at the 50,000 feet level – broad statements of ambition and high-level goals. Maybe that was good enough back then, but it’s not now. We all see what’s going on in the world. Employees want to know if we’re doing the right thing and how they can do their part. Our people want details. They’re the ones who are going to do the work to make us more sustainable, so we need them to have those details too.
We do that by looking at the things we’re focused on as a business, and saying ‘OK, how do we want to grow in, say, buildings and construction or automotive, through sustainability?’ and ‘What do we need to do to up-skill the organization to deliver that?’ And then I, along with my team, set up personas and segments to help define what each person needs to do and understand. What people in sales or customer service need on sustainability is different to what people in manufacturing, the lab, or communications need.
Even if someone doesn’t play a big part in delivering sustainability, they still need a good baseline of understanding what we’re doing and why, because everyone in the business is a potential ambassador for the business.
Where do you focus to create the most value?
For me, it’s about transparency and simplification, so that it’s easy for our stakeholders to understand what BASF is about. We need to tell stories about what we’re doing, why that matters to different stakeholders, what we’re working on and where we’re going, in simple, engaging ways, because that’s what gets people on board.
How do you communicate what’s challenging?
This comes back to transparency. Take recycling: we make plastics, so have a role to play in tackling pollution. We’re clear on what we’re doing in our business and value chain on this plastics journey, but there are barriers to recycling that we alone can’t change, like adequate sorting and infrastructure and mandated recycling rates. We work with our industry value chain partners as well as NGOs to advocate for change because we want to solve the plastic pollution problem too.
How do you manage greenwash risks?
Managing greenwashing risks is a much bigger part of my brief now. These are complicated topics that are changing fast. We have always worked closely with our lawyers to ensure we’re being factual and not greenwashing while still telling impactful stories. We can all see examples though from other companies where something that wasn’t thought of as greenwashing yesterday is being sued today. I just hope this doesn’t discourage companies from talking about how they are solving sustainability challenges – it’s those discussions that lead to breakthroughs.
Any final thoughts?
As pressure ramps up, sustainability communications is only going to become more important. More and more people will want companies to lay out their story and the reality of what they’re doing. The change we need won’t come from silence.
If you’d like help communicating your sustainability work and position, please get in touch.
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