Ten measures to ensure sustainable workplaces

Companies are open and permeable systems that must respond with agility, anticipation, and adaptability to societal challenges. Therefore, the workplace cannot be confined to being a rigid, hierarchical physical space. Instead, the sustainable workplace emerges as a complex and fluid ecosystem of physical and digital spaces, also comprising relationships, collaborations, and alliances, enabling the creation of value and the achievement of business objectives. 

Below, we summarize the ten main insights from the Esade-ISS Sustainability in the Workplace Barometer, developed by senior researcher Sonia Ruiz from the Esade Institute for Social Innovation, in collaboration with ISS Spain. 

1. Humanistic and transformative leadership

Workplaces reflect the leadership and governance of a company. Leaders need to foster active listening and critical thinking. They should possess a systemic vision and the ability to prioritize and integrate key stakeholders' knowledge into decision-making, evaluating aspects with the greatest impact on transforming the business model towards sustainability. 

Sustainable leadership anticipates long-term changes while pursuing short-term business resilience. Its humanistic nature places people at the center, enabling talent development through collaborative projects that integrate sustainability into corporate strategy. Breaking internal and external silos is essential, often challenging existing hierarchies to provide more democratized spaces and more horizontal, collaborative structures that facilitate transformation. 

2. Reflecting purpose, values, and corporate culture

In sustainable workplaces, purpose goes beyond a statement of intent: it permeates the way things are done, corporate values, organizational culture, rewarded behaviors, and the way success is measured in the organization. If business impact is correctly defined, the purpose will ultimately define the business decision-making process. 

In this sense, the workplace should serve as a "showcase" of the company's value proposition as an agent of change and be consistent with its commitment to environmental, social, and governance issues. It demonstrates integrity and coherence between what is said and what is done. 

3. Enabling active listening, communication, and transparency

A sustainable workplace offers opportunities for genuine two-way communication, establishing spaces, strategies, and ways of relating based on humility, curiosity, and respect for differences. It's important for communication towards sustainability to be clear, with messages free of technical jargon, adapted to each audience. 

Transparency should not be seen as an effort to convey what the company does well, but as a learning and improvement process that facilitates two-way communication and trust, reinforcing people's resilience and commitment. Therefore, employee listening strategies should involve and empower them to provide active and frequent feedback. 

4. Nurturing the employee experience

The sustainable workplace places the individual at the center and enables spaces of care, connection, and self-awareness that provide security, holistic well-being, and professional development opportunities. If we view the workplace as a fluid space, we must consider how people interact and live within it. Their input should be considered not only in the design phase but also in the daily management. 

As sustainability integrates into the workplace, employees can be essential in identifying opportunities for process, system, and project improvements. Their capacity to offer new perspectives and ideas to advance sustainability in all its dimensions should be enhanced. 

5. Spaces for training and empowerment

Related to the previous point, the employee experience is also more meaningful when there is knowledge, clarity in roles and expectations to mainstream sustainability, including performance metrics. Three aspects should be considered: identifying key people and departments, their training and empowerment, and the creation of projects with a cross-cutting perspective. 

It involves cultivating attitudes, behaviors, capabilities, and skills, as well as closing knowledge gaps about sustainability while considering differences between functional roles. Empowering people also means strengthening the internal culture with metrics, incentives, resources, and available time to participate creatively in processes. 

6. Laboratories for sustainable innovation

Creating a sustainable, innovative, entrepreneurial, and creative culture involves rethinking the culture of experimentation and acceptance of error and failure. The workplace should be perceived as a space for open and collaborative innovation, where unsustainable business models can be openly questioned. Building an innovation culture relies on cultivating new habits and integrating multiple perspectives, knowledge, and capabilities that enrich decision-making and sustainable innovation processes. 

7. Social innovation as a lever for inclusivity

Collaborating with social entities beyond traditional philanthropy allows the creation of social innovation ecosystems, enabling employees to acquire social intrapreneurship skills and a new perspective for managing sustainable projects. Social innovation is a fundamental tool for companies to rethink their business models, go beyond profit generation, innovate, and collaborate with society. Additionally, collaborating with vulnerable groups strengthens empathy and respect for diversity in corporate culture. 

8. Compliance and regulations as opportunities for collaboration

Both the new Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), requiring analysis of the impact generated by the company's activity and its response through corporate strategy and business model, and the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD), involving identification and mitigation of adverse impacts on human rights and the environment in the supply chain, elevate the importance of collaborative risk and opportunity management along the value chain and with stakeholders. 

Moreover, double materiality assessment processes can be a good starting point to evaluate the strategic implications of the results obtained and to develop action plans involving collaboration with both stakeholders and workplaces of various companies in the value chain. 

9. From "value chains" to "value ecosystems"

The concept of value networks goes beyond value chains, implying the creation of collaborative spaces based on solving specific shared challenges, co-creating solutions with change agents sharing the same vision. Rather than relationships between companies forming the links of the value chain, a collaboration ecosystem and knowledge and data exchange platforms are generated, feeding back and creating new changes in workplaces. 

10. Attention to governance

Perhaps the most relevant point for integrating sustainability into workplaces is governance. It is crucial that business management handles this paradigm shift well. We are moving from a model based on physical space management to managing ecosystems of relationships with the value chain; from a more hierarchical, control-based system to a more democratized one; from short-termism to long-term management; from reducing negative impacts to creating "regenerative" and positively impactful organizations. 

For this, it is essential to have a higher percentage of board members and senior executives with sustainability knowledge, for remuneration policies to be linked to sustainability performance objectives, and for top-level management to be actively involved both in stakeholder interaction and in integrating strategies to address material corporate strategy issues.