How Sodexo and Pearson prioritize their SDGs

When the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) wereadopted globally 12 months ago, many multinational companies proclaimed their intention to support at least some of the 17 ambitious global development aspirations. And they’ve been pretty true to their word.

Indeed, datapublished in early OctoberBSR/Globescan的作者建议，超过一半的公司（52％）使用或打算使用可持续发展目标告知其公司可持续性战略。竞彩足球app怎么下载当然，对于公司可持续发展领导者而言，较难的部分一直在弄清楚这竞彩足球app怎么下载些相当开放的目标是truly relevant.

一些组织，例如全球食品服务巨头Sodexo, have aligned themselves with all of them. "There’s really not one SDG that we value over the others," said Rohini Anand, senior vice president of corporate responsibility and chief diversity officer for the company, during a panel session at last week’s年度BSR会议在纽约。（Sodexo是世界第19大雇主。）

但是，阿南德说，可持续发展目标是鼓励“性别平等”（第5号）对她说的最大意义，因为她觉得朝着它的进步会影响其他许多目标的积极势头。她告诉与会者：“这项投资投资于社区的家庭；它对健康，教育，减少贫困，停止饥饿有影响。”

Publishing company Pearson Education is laser-focused on the fourth goal ("quality education") for a similar reason — the ripple effect it can have on helping people in both emerging and developed economies find employment, said another BSR panelist, Tim Bozik, president of global products for the company. "Students are learners across all ages and stages," he said.

Putting words into practice

Let’s be real: putting an SDG into context requires some thoughtful dialogue. Most of them are very vague yet simultaneously very ambitious, by design.

To get Sodexo’s managers excited about the idea of creating a more gender-diverse workforce, the company surveyed thousands of its own managers to better understand the impact that "gender-balanced teams" (those that included 40 percent to 60 percent women) might have on the company’s financial performance.

Those teams finished ahead of other teams on all five of the company’s key performance indicators — brand awareness, client protection, engagement, gross profit and organic growth, Anand said. "It’s the question of why are we doing this work," she said. "It certainly was a want to engage all of our managers."

我认为，可持续发展目标为我们提供了一个平台来协作和扩展，增加了我们正在做的事情的影响。

Based on that data, Sodexo set a goal to ensure that all of its teams are gender-balanced. It also is striving to change the make-up of its upper management so that 40 percent of those roles are filled by women by 2025, she said.

阿南德说：“我认为可持续发展目标已经为我们提供了一个平台来协作和扩展，增加了我们正在做的事情的影响。”

A new framework for collaboration

The emergence of the SDGs is transforming how venerable worldwide children’s advocacy organization UNICEF engages with companies to address child rights within businesses — notably, the impact of children within global supply chains, said Subajini Jayasekaran, child rights and business manager for UNICEF, who also shared her experiences with the BSR attendees.

Over the past two years, that has inspired UNICEF to heighten its resources dedicated to collaborating with organizations involved in the Bangladesh garment sector, palm oil production in Indonesia and Asia, apparel production in Vietnam, teak plantations in India and cocoa farming in Côte d'Ivoire.

For example, in designing education proposals and immunization programs for Indonesia, UNICEF is tapping local businesses to help reach deep into communities. "Our colleagues are talking every day with the ministry of education, of public health, they’re designing policies, they’re designing polio immunization initiatives. How can they link up with what capacities and resources exist on the ground through business?" Registrations, for example, could be increased dramatically, Jayasekaran noted.

Why should or would a business care to be involved? One motivator might be the opportunity to reduce instances of absenteeism related to preventable illnesses. Even advocating a simple policy, such as encouraging new mothers to bread-feed their infants, could have a big impact. That’s because breast-fed babies are less likely to become sick which, in turn, makes it possible for mothers to report to work more consistently.

A sharper lens for product development

据Bozik称，Pearson使用可持续发展目标作为它已经建立的内部孵化器的核心考虑因素，以投资于为维修水平的社区提供高质量教育的公司，风险投资和组织。

一个例子是公司的alliance with Save the Children建立旨在为“因紧急情况流离失所”的难民儿童提供教育的伙伴关系。最初的重点是约旦的叙利亚家庭。

"We’re using the spirit of the SDGs, including a greater focus on measurement, in a lot of our product development broader processes," Bozik said.