What: Korn Ferry addresses the strategic steps for an efficient CSR approach implementation within organisations.

Why it is important: It is all about making an impact with the entire organisation and being able to measure it, rather than declarations and a siloed CSR department.

Korn Ferry looks at the ideal steps to be taken by organisations to actually catalyse ESG and sustainability strategies from within, and turn intent into impact. Korn Ferry identifies 3 common derailers that, so far, have disrupted such efforts:

• Legacy and weight of traditions,
• Silos, as sustainability can not be just allocated to an ESG department, but embedded into the corporate culture,
• Short-term hit, favoured by shareholders’ expectation of fast ROI.

Korn Ferry advocates for a materiality assessment in order to identify where to focus efforts and investments when auditing the organisation. Once this is done, 5 steps are suggested:

• Align leaders on the purpose and material issues, and publicly voice the intent. It can not be treated as a side-venture, but woven in the fabric of the business strategy. This goes through the full onboarding of the entire leading team,
• Understand and quantify the downside risks and upside opportunities, and set targets that can be measured,
• Generate a compelling story supporting a simple, understandable strategy that will also allow the whole company to be part of this adventure,
• Introduce experimentation to find out what needs to change in the leadership, working methods, organisation, talent and culture,
• Evaluate what works and scale it across the entire organisation.

Five factors to ensure a successful strategy