The climate emergency and social justice have become hot topics, and not before time. We are all reminded every day of the need to do our bit. Businesses have not been exempted from this.
Larger companies are required by law to think about such things as transparency in the supply chain and gender pay gaps. Some also spend large amounts of money on sustainability consultants and glossy reports showing how well they are doing in particular aspects of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR). But from a consumer’s perspective, it is difficult to know how much of this is window dressing. And for smaller companies, it is difficult to know where to start.
Bristol Pound has been working with University of Bath over the course of two academic years to try to address these issues. There were two aims behind this work. First, to create a tool that could create a statistical picture of how Bristol’s economy was shifting towards environmental and social sustainability, that all businesses, no matter how small, could engage with. Second, to encourage businesses that had not yet engaged with this agenda at all to start to think about these issues, and to give them some ideas about how to get started.
Working with Dr Kostas Iatridis and the postgraduate students on the Masters in Sustainability and Management course that he leads, the brief from Bristol Pound was to design a tool for businesses that would:
1. Assess holistically how businesses were thinking about their corporate social responsibility, aligned with the UN’s global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
2. Require no prior knowledge about the SDGs or any jargon associated with good environmental or social practice
3. Require no looking up or preparation of data, like CO2 emissions, electricity bills or statistics on the diversity of the staff team
4. Take a maximum of 15-20 minutes to complete
5. Be able to be completed by any business owner or senior manager with a computer and internet access
6. Be appropriate for any business – whether in manufacturing, retail, hospitality or service provision etc
It may not sound that difficult to achieve, but it was! Nearly two years on from kicking off the project, we now have a questionnaire that may just fit the bill, and now we’re keen to test it out. So, this is a request for your help. If you are a business owner or senior manager, please help us to beta test this survey tool: https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/bristolbusiness.
It will only take about 15 minutes, maybe less, and it might even be interesting to do or help you to think about things in a different way. And it will help us to know if the survey is fit for purpose, as well as providing some baseline data, giving an insight into how well the city is doing in its push towards building a new economy. Thanks in advance for helping us out!