A new paper Accelerate your sustainability transformation: a diagnostic approach, shares findings from Arup’s research with clients at different points on their journey to transformation.

Arup partnered with organisations across multiple sectors including rail, government, water, fast moving consumer goods and higher education, supporting these organisations understand their readiness for sustainability implementation and identify areas of action to progress their journey with greater impact and clarity.

Following more than 150 in-depth interviews, approximately 25 workshops with clients over 12 months, and extensive review of academic literature and industry insights, the paper outlined key challenges and opportunities being faced.

The paper aims to provide practical guidance to business leaders who are on their own path to transforming their organisations and are looking beyond compliance. It provides guidance on unlocking the ‘how’ of sustainability implementation at the pace and scale they need.

Key findings and recommendations included:

  • Clarity of purpose: leaders need to ensure there is a clarity of organisational purpose to deliver sustainable outcomes which align with the core work of the business.

  • Leaders should build capability in the right places across the entire organisational structure, with accountability for sustainability flowing from senior level roles into responsibilities of the whole workforce.

  • Adopting a connected systems view of the organisation: transformation requires a holistic view of organisations, and a deep consideration of their culture and ways of working. It demands a full infiltration of sustainability into every facet of the organisation’s being.

  • Creating mechanisms for learning, fostering collaboration to solve sustainability related challenges and providing opportunities to test ideas and innovate together, helps generate people’s appetite to do things differently and embed sustainability into their ways of working.

Download the report here