When non-profit environmental disclosure platform CDP revealed its 2021 list Dozens of companies from the healthcare, biotech and pharmaceutical industries made the list of the 1,300 companies that institutional investors called to share data on their environmental impact.
More than 150 institutional investors and financial institutions representing $17 trillion in assets signed up for CDP’s annual event. They are part of a growing number of investors, regulators, policymakers, business and supply chain partners, communities and workers who are calling for businesses across industries to be more forthcoming about their environmental and sustainability-related activities. But it’s not just external pressures that motivate organizations to make sustainability central to their business. Many realize that doing so can create new value for the customers and communities they serve.
The drive towards carbon neutrality, zero emissions, zero waste and social responsibility is just beginning, driven by companies like Value Balance Alliance, a group of multinational companies is seeking to “establish a unified, internationally accepted valuation methodology for calculating reliable sustainability metrics.” These metrics may focus on the company’s social and community impact. Like CDP, the Value Balance Alliance includes members from healthcare-related industries as well as well-known brands from finance, automotive, manufacturing and other sectors. [Editor’s Note: SAP is a member of the Value Balancing Alliance]
Synchronized, standardized sustainability programs like these are built on well-intentioned but uncoordinated efforts by individual companies. Given the growing importance of environmental and social issues in employee choices, they are aligning organizations from multiple industries around a shared sense of social responsibility, a desire to lead by example, and a recognition that future profitability is likely to depend on sustainable behavior, Patients and partners make. Behind these sustainability pursuits are three main drivers:
- Climate Action – Towards Zero Emissions. This is mainly to reduce carbon footprint and greenhouse gas emissions.
- Circular economy – moving towards zero waste. This involves practicing the circular principles of reusing, recycling and/or repurposing materials and products.
- Social Responsibility – Towards Zero Inequality In their interactions and engagement with patients, customers, staff and the communities they serve.
After a recent deep dive into how the healthcare industry addresses sustainability issues, my team and I found that, in general, many companies are in the early stages of defining their strategies for issues such as waste, emissions and inequality. Strangely, our research identified organizations that made significant progress in one or more of these three areas.
It also revealed capabilities that, in our estimation, are critical to accelerating progress towards implementing and implementing the SDGs.The ability to measure and report on internal operational data points is a good starting point for organizations to identify where they stand from a compliance perspective, as well as their goals and peers. Healthcare companies need integrated tools to collect and track the composition and provenance of the materials and equipment they use, as well as the energy their operations consume and the emissions they generate, and the ability to standardize and customize this data to meet potentially widely varying Disclosure and Reporting Requirements.
This data has an important story to tell, because by applying analytical tools to it, organizations can discover the most cost-effective paths to minimize waste and environmental impact. For example, a large Swiss hospital network is actively measuring and taking steps to reduce its use of volatile anesthetics, as well as the energy consumption of its MRI and CT equipment, while another Swiss supplier only purchases renewable hydroelectric power for its facilities. In the United States, a large healthcare network is working to reduce waste, such as by pledging to reduce the consumption of 1.9 million single-use plastic bottles per year at its care sites.
Hosting all sustainability data on an easily accessible, enterprise-grade digital platform is another important organizational step in driving sustainability: combining new sustainability-related KPIs with more traditional financial KPIs, and Embed them throughout your business. These sustainability KPIs – around women’s leadership, carbon footprint, employee retention, etc. – help to synchronise within the organisation with the organisation’s sustainability strategy as a holistic guiding mechanism and a way to demonstrate the impact organisational activities bring to the business The way the value comes. community and society.
Healthcare companies are increasingly realizing that they are not alone – their sustainability initiatives are fundamentally intertwined with and influenced by the behavior of their value chain: suppliers, partners, suppliers, etc. According to CDP estimates, emissions from the healthcare/pharmaceutical/biotech supply chain are, on average, 7.9 times higher than emissions from a company’s direct operations. The reality is that supply chain partners with poor sustainability performance can undermine a company’s own sustainability goals and initiatives, so companies must have the ability to evaluate supply chain partners against their sustainability performance.
This level of accountability presupposes that healthcare providers establish digital networks throughout the supply chain so they can share data, verify its origin, ensure accuracy and make decisions based on trusted, auditable documentation.The business network can also be a catalyst for companies to collaboratively design and develop new services, treatment processes and systems with waste and emissions reduction in mind, so they align and share risks as they work towards their sustainability goals, especially as more The increasingly important satisfaction of patients and their relatives and their main goals for sustainable recovery
With a business network or ecosystem that extends beyond company or even industry boundaries, healthcare companies are better able to explore ways to recycle, recycle and/or reuse resources, materials and products. For example, hospitals can partner with their energy utilities and renewable energy companies to develop their own solar or wind power generation resources to meet the needs of their facilities.
Let’s not lose sight of the most critical element to the success of any sustainability program: people—especially an empowered, engaged workforce. The first is an organization-wide agreement around the goal of zero inequality in patient and staff treatment. Because in short, the more engaged and capable employees are at work, the better they can deliver superior patient outcomes. The better the initial results, the less additional intervention is required and therefore the less drain on hospital and healthcare resources.
So having HR tools to keep tabs on the physical and mental health of employees and better manage their workload and stress ultimately does have a direct link to the SDGs.
How does your healthcare organization view and manage sustainability issues?Take a short survey from SAP here. We will plant a tree for each response we receive.
Photo: Petmar, Getty Images
