Sustainability is now becoming much more mainstream, with businesses across all industry sectors looking at how they can become more sustainable in order to grow and ultimately, survive.
For many businesses this means looking at reducing waste and energy consumption across all aspects of operations, processes, and people management.
And this is where a robust sustainability plan comes into action.
A plan that starts at the very beginning; from managing and onboarding your teams, to evaluating your impact on the environment, your sustainability strategy encompasses all of your business operations, requires full engagement, and is a long-term objective in supporting your business growth.
At Nexus, we work with businesses looking to grow and established businesses looking to expand their product base.
Supporting your revenue and sales, we support sustainability through collaboration.
How to build a sustainable business
Re-evaluate your company vision and values
Your vision and values are what set you apart. Supporting your business’s priorities, your vision, and values are specific to you, and it’s imperative that you have a strategy in place to support these.
A strategy that includes a sustainable focus.
For example, what changes to processes, procedures, and attitudes do you require to integrate sustainability into the workforce and change mindsets from within?
By setting a long-term vision and key priorities and communicating and sharing these with the entire workforce, you can ensure everyone is working toward the same goal.
Build social trust
Businesses need to build trust – it is not a given.
But how can you do this effectively AND sustainably?
By getting involved, contributing positively to the community, and communicating your sustainable actions with society.
Sustainable actions such as:
- Encouraging grassroots community entrepreneurship
- Demonstrating sustained employment in the community
- Using your skills and experience to support local schools and charities
- Providing, where appropriate, opportunities for graduates.
Look at your leadership model
It’s important when it comes to building a sustainable business that you lead from the top. This means you’re not just paying lip service; trust us, people will see straight through you.
Evaluate your management structure. Identify what skills you have, what skills you might be missing, and how you can introduce diversity and equality into the mix.
Sustainability at this level is about transparency in actions and communications, constantly improving and moving forward.
Collaborate
To build a sustainable business successfully, look for potential collaborations. Helping you to achieve what may be out of reach for many SMEs.
Helping to bring change and supporting local businesses, suppliers, and the local ecosystem, we work with companies who want to scale product lines or manufacture a new innovative product but don’t have the capacity, facilities, or resources to do so.
Through collaboration, we design, develop, build, and support what you require.
We understand that you can develop strong, sustainable, and commercially beneficial relationships that support business growth with the right collaborations.
Invest in your employees
How can you encourage support toward future sustainability?
By evaluating staff and management structures. Checking: Are these equal? Well-balanced? Do the priorities of your internal stakeholders align with your vision and values?
Investing time and communicating with your employees is key. This and providing quality training and education.
Reduce your carbon footprint
Reducing the negative impact on the environment is the focal point and number one element of any business’s sustainability plan.
By reviewing your supply chains, manufacturing partners, processes, and procedures, businesses can find ways to reduce waste and energy consumption to support environmental sustainability.
Benefits of building a sustainable business
- Improves your reputation in the local community and wider society, bringing value to your brand.
- Improves staff retention; people want to work for you due to the work you do for others.
- You can increase efficiency through the right collaborations, which in turn helps you reduce costs.
- Sustainability can lead to greater innovations as you’re open to more opportunities to develop products and services that drive sustainable outcomes.
- Sustainability in your teams creates greater equality, fairer wages, and investment in diversity.
By building and developing a robust sustainability strategy that focuses on entire business processes and your people and management structures, you can see positive business growth and outcomes.
Intelligent engineering – Nexus IE
At Nexus IE, we believe that doing good is good for you as an individual and team, and good for business, and sustainability is more than just something to keep your customers happy.
It is a process where all the initiatives we’ve discussed above come together gradually to build a sustainable, successful, and efficient business.
How we can help
We’re a B2B contract product manufacturer partner, offering high value and low volume, making your sales sophisticated in even the most complex of situations.
Providing intelligent, sustainable engineering through collaboration we bring businesses together by designing, developing, building, and supporting innovative new products on behalf of businesses for businesses.
Contact Nexus IE today to see how we support business growth.
