Around 57% of sustainability professionals find the lack of a budget and interest across the business to be the most challenging aspect of their job, a new white paper has found.
Of those who replied to the survey from whatimpact.com, 17% said that a lack of interest in social value within the organisation was their biggest frustration, whilst 40% cited a lack of budget as their main gripe.
Most of the social value focused professionals responding to the survey were educated, 44% of social value professionals said they had an undergraduate degree whilst 41% said they had a postgraduate degree.
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Despite this, some interviewees said that the subject continued to be thought of as “wishy washy” and added that staff sometimes did not want to be “engaged”.
Whatimpact.com CEO Tiia Sammallahti said: “It is astonishing and sad that none of the interviewed social value and sustainability professionals had a dedicated budget for tools, systems and formulating partnerships with charities and social enterprises on the grass root level.”
“They need to ask for money and other resources from other departments to fulfil sustainability commitments.”
“Time has passed on those companies whose boardrooms and executive level decision makers do not understand that social value is one of the biggest success factors in business both in short term contract revenue as in growing the overall business value.”
“We need to ensure that the way social value is calculated, it reflects proven outcomes and the benefits for individuals and the communities,” said whatimpact.com head of social value Michael McLoughlin.
