No longer just a catch phrase, but an important principle to incorporate into your business. Sustainability is an evolving principle that in fact applies to all aspects of your business, from staffing, to systems, to computers, to your environmental impact. Implementing systems in your business is the first step to sustainability, as this underpins all other areas. Sustainability is a self-perpetuating cyclical process that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of the future.
Applied to staffing, for example, this means rostering is taken holistically as a short, medium and long term exercise all at once to avoid 15 hour days, 80 hour weeks and no holidays. If you roster your best staff for four 15 hour days in a row, you may fulfil your short term needs, but you will compromise your ability to meet your future needs because your staff member will not only be exhausted but probably very unhappy. Taken over a longer time, this leads to stress and resentment and dissatisfaction with management, and most likely a premature resignation.
Applied to your environmental impact, we would look at all aspects including packaging, lighting, water usage, organic waste, chemical usage, vehicles and transport, heating and cooling systems, and recycling.
