Continuing our series on Sustainability I am joined this week by Fiona Graham from the IFB as we discuss what they are doing in helping Uk based family businesses in their own sustainability journey’s.

Audit and Governance Reforms

Before we got stuck into the topic of the show Fiona gave us a really useful overview of an important UK Government consultation that is looking at reforming the audit and governance rules that are currently in place.

The link to the consultation is further down on the page but it may well be that your business is impacted, and as such we are recommending that you read the consultation and respond to it (again a link is provided below).

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Listen to the episode here: 

Focus on Sustainability

2021 seems to be the year that there is a huge amount of focus on the topic of sustainability and we discuss how family businesses are well positioned to adapt and adopt sustainability as a core strategy. 

Family businesses tend to have a focus on the longer term and are less controlled by the need to satisfy the short term needs of anonymous shareholders. This fits perfectly with the need to adopt long term strategies with sustainability at its core. 

We discuss how businesses that have been in the same place for generations perhaps have a harder task of adapting their premises given that it may be older and not as easy to change. 

The Impact of COVID-19

We look at the role the pandemic has played in acting as a catalyst for change by highlighting that by restricting our ability to travel we have been able to have a positive impact on the level of emissions from transport. 

As we emerge from the crisis many of our businesses will need to change in order to meet consumer demand and not only does this provide an opportunity to embrace this change but to also do it through a sustainability lens. 

Many consumers are now actively seeking to work with or buy from companies that are able to demonstrate that they are operating in an ethical and sustainable way. 

Starting can seem overwhelming 

You may well be feeling overwhelmed by where to start in your own sustainability strategy and there are lots of resources available to help you. We discussed the Family Business for Sustainable Development initiative from Family Business Network – International and UNCTAD in last weeks show and there are other links below that will help you. Organisations like the IFB are also happy to share their knowledge and experience, and that of their members, so please get in touch with them if you need some help.