I usually have a conversation with the students just after they’ve interviewed the company and are about to start writing their report. They’re enthusiastic and have creative ideas about activities that might help the companies to become more sustainable. At this stage, my job is to nurture this enthusiasm while discussing the potential pros and cons of each suggestion. Profit is the main concern for most companies, and with so much uncertainty in the world, it’s difficult to encourage the long-term thinking needed to implement sustainability-related decisions.
Sustainability plays a role at all levels of society and in all sectors, be it economic, medical, physical, geological or biological. Our students are the leaders of the future, so anything we can pass on will have an impact. We also see that few companies have sustainability at the top of their agenda. It gets some attention, but profit is still paramount. And we understand that, because of course a company has to stay afloat. But it’s nice to see our students going out with the scan for the first time, having conversations with people from different levels of an organisation, and becoming more powerful, stronger and more self-aware as a result. It’s exciting to sit at the table with different companies, and that you’re actually giving advice on the steps to take is something the students find very special. We’re now in the second year of the SDG Scan; in the past two years some 300 students and almost 50 companies have participated.
Learning by doing—action learning—is a very important step in our vision. Not just listening and learning and researching, but going out there and experiencing what it really means to put theory into practice. Exciting, necessary and wonderful to experience. If our students can help to future-proof a company, it changes them too.
So far, the students have conducted scans in several countries. The organisations range from startups to multinationals in seven different sectors. The major challenges we face as a society will affect everything: procurement, sales, production methods, but also how we organise society and how we live our lives. We’re already noticing this in the aftermath of COVID-19, but it will only increase in the future when companies are required to comply with rules such as those formulated in the climate agreement. Waiting is possible, but not smart, which is why this scan forms the starting point for the transformation of organisations. They’ll take the lead and show as pioneers that it can be done.
