1

Practical how-to guide: Getting started creating an organisational sustainability strategy

For this ‘How To’ Masterclass, the UK-GBC has partnered with Jones Lang LaSalle to provide you with a short guidance note on how to get started creating a sustainability strategy for an organisation.

Background to Jones Lang LaSalle & UK Green Building Council

Jones Lang LaSalle has over 17 years’ experience working with its clients to create bespoke sustainability strategies and in the last 3 years’ alone, they have helped over 30 companies develop their sustainability strategies.

The UK Green Building Council requires its members to continually improve performance around sustainability and often works with its members to offer review and suggestions of their sustainability strategies. Pinpoint has been created to support the process of navigating the plethora of information and resources available on this topic.

Useful links and resources on sustainability strategy development for an organisation

The table on the following pages has been prepared to provide you with a ‘quick start’ guide; setting out the fundamental steps involved in the development of your sustainability strategy. By following these simple steps, you will have a good foundation-level understanding of how to develop a sustainability strategy.

Top tips before you get started:

✓ Make sure you get buy-in from your senior management for the development of the new strategy✓ Be sure to put together a resourcing plan for the both the development of the strategy (especially the

stakeholder engagement) and implementation.

Task Description Tools

Identify sustainability risks and opportunities based on your business strategy

Assess your company’s business strategy and specific activities in order to identify sustainability risks and opportunities.

Assess if / how your company is already successfully addressing the risks and opportunities identified.

This process is likely to include a review of legislation, investor requirements and peer practices.

• GRI G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines (p9; p90) – for sustainability issues and materiality process

• Global Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark (GRESB) – for material issues for property companies & funds from an investor perspective

• Internal register of sustainability-related legislation (if this exists)

• ISO 26000 – Social Responsibility Standard

• IIRC Integrated Reporting Framework

• AccountAbility’s AA 1000 Stakeholder Engagement Standard

• Internal risk management mapping tools (if they exist) can be used to help rank sustainability aspects in terms of their significance to the business.

Consult your stakeholders

Identify your stakeholders – these should include both ‘internal stakeholders’ (e.g., employees); and ‘external stakeholders’, (e.g., investors, customers, community, suppliers, NGOs, etc.).

Prioritise the most important stakeholders to engage with and the ways in which you will engage with them (e.g., interviews, workshops, surveys, etc.).

Carry out engagement (if you are considering an extensive stakeholder engagement programme, this may involve a phased approach).

Prioritise material issues

Based on the findings of the two tasks above, identify which sustainability issues should be prioritised by your company and the business case for addressing each one.

Draft a sustainability policy and over-arching objectives

Draft a sustainability policy and over-arching objectives to articulate what the company wants to achieve and the key sustainability issues it will focus on.

Best practice examples include:

• British Land

• Cundall

• Derwent London

• M&G

• Majid Al Futtaim Properties

• ODA Sustainability policy

• SWIP Real Estate

3

Task Description Tools

Get leadership buy-in and establish delivery team to take responsibility for delivering sustainability

Present the work developed through the previous tasks to Company executives. It is essential to get leadership buy-in at this stage, including sign-off for the policy.

Establish a sustainability committee or taskforce to oversee development and delivery of the new sustainability strategy, with clear terms of reference and shared responsibilities.

The new sustainability policy should then be communicated to all key stakeholders and ideally made publicly available.

Set targets and action plan

In your first year you may simply choose to identify KPIs to measure your impact in order to obtain a set of reliable baseline data. Following that, it is important to set applicable but challenging targets to improve your company’s sustainability performance.

Targets can be supported by an action plan which clearly defines the scope of the target; how it will be measured; the people responsible for oversight and delivery, and deadlines.

For setting targets and KPIs:

• GRI G4 Sustainability Reporting Guidelines and GRI CRESS

• EPRA Sustainability BPRs

• GRESB

• One Planet Living Framework

• Peer targets

Implementation and embedding

Once you have put in place targets and action plans, you will need to focus on implementation and ongoing monitoring; working with your teams to communicate the strategy internally and commence implementation.

Over time you may want to consider benchmarking both internally and externally to understand your performance and help inform the setting of more challenging goals.

Internal benchmarking of your own assets; and external benchmarking:

• GRESB

• JLL & BBP Real Estate Sustainability Benchmark

• Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP)

• Dow Jones Sustainability Index

• For property companies - EPRA sustainability BPR Awards

Authors: Sophie Walker, Elisabeth Filkin & Beth Ambrose – JLL; Anna Surgenor - UKGBC