Sustainable Business Case for Women
Is your company having trouble staying on task with sustainability? Do its leaders get distracted by quarterly numbers and lose sight of the more environmentally and socially responsible programs that were such a good idea a few months ago? Do you scratch your head in wonder that a fair number of women seem to be leaving the company’s employ? It is time to connect the dots.
A report recently released by Earthsense and a study published in McKinsey Quarterly combine to tell a very compelling story on this front. They find, respectively, that employees are losing confidence in their company’s green claims and that the gender gap has real implications for company performance (and is not just an image problem). So, what if sustainability, including a corporation’s green claims compared to actual commitment, are another focus through which businesses can tend to their gender gap and improve company performance?
Here’s the thing: Women are not likely to be satisfied, for long, with simply having a job that pays fairly. That’s too linear. In the long run, they are looking to work within companies that share, commit to and reflect values similar to their own. As the McKinsey report says, women (perhaps not unlike men?) appreciate better work-life balance, networking opportunities and mentorship, among other things. I’d argue that sustainably-invested companies have an extra edge in providing some important “other things.”
If companies DO stick to their environmental and social missions, they will be speaking the language of a lot of today’s businesswomen who are the bellwether of an entire workforce noticing such employer details. By maintaining and growing their sustainable pursuits, companies tend to the emerging values and personal passion of just the people they need to figure out how to hold onto. And, those people – women – are the ones who can also force the continuing case for sustainability from within.
The insights from these two studies just hint at the ways in which women will continue to be crucial to the sustainability movement – as both internal change agents and consumers. Watch this space for more, because I’ll keep sharing what I learn in my own exploration of this fascinating topic.
Photo credit: MoVio
