Deloitte Greenhouse: Singapore

The client’s challenge

Increasingly, environmental reporting standards such as GR4 or Integrated Reporting (the practice of combining sustainability and financial reporting) is being adopted by companies considered to be leaders in the CSR space. Our client – a Thai manufacturing conglomerate – has been consistently recognized as an industry leader in sustainability by global rankings. Yet its sustainability leadership team wanted to go over and above, and sought Deloitte’s help in achieving best-in-class sustainability. They specifically wanted to look at two problem areas: how to determine the right sustainability metrics and KPI’s based on industry best practices, and how to gain alignment on sustainability initiatives between business units.

Deloitte’s solution

The Deloitte Greenhouse team and sustainability teams partnered to design and deliver a full-day Sustainability Lab. 28 participants comprising the company’s sustainability leadership and sustainability teams across business units convened at the company’s HQ in Bangkok. The day was designed in trademark Deloitte Greenhouse style: full of interaction and collaborative problem solving, with no lectures or presentations. The session started with visioning exercises where participants articulated their 12-month sustainability strategy and evaluated their ideal state across the day’s objectives. They were then taken through visual case studies of best practices from three industry leaders globally and asked to benchmark themselves across 11 best practices across the EES (Economic, Environmental and Social) pillars.

The participants then voted on adopting two of these best practices in their respective business units, based on which was most important to their business unit, as well as to the company as a whole. They evaluated these prioritised best practices to ideate their ideal KPI for both of these practices based on a current / confidence / challenges matrix. The lab culminated in a detailed action planning exercise where participants committed to clear next steps to implement the prioritized best practices and KPIs in their business units.

Impact on client’s business

The lab provided content and context in a non-traditional manner, bringing together subject matter expertise and research in an engaging and actionable way. The lab helped build alignment between the business units, and revaluate their sustainability metrics / KPI’s so as to achieve best-in-class sustainability results. According to the client, the lab accelerated the company’s journey towards sustainability excellence by laying out a clear direction (based on best practices), and securing the various stakeholders’ commitment to it.