At Ever, we love the new year period as a time to lean out and get some perspective. What should our big plans be this year? What can we realistically prioritise, and what is a pipe dream? How do we need to pivot, dial up, or re-energise our five-year sustainability plan?
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At Ever, we love the new year period as a time to lean out and get some perspective.
- What should our big plans be this year?
- What can we realistically prioritise, and what is a pipe dream?
- How do we need to pivot, dial up, or re-energise our five-year sustainability plan?
We set out over the course of January/February to check in with a selection of our partners and clients, to better understand their sustainability goals for the coming year and confidently set out sustainability resolutions for 2025.
These sessions provided valuable insights into the evolving challenges and aspirations businesses are facing as they continue to embed sustainability within their operations. From these conversations, we have distilled key lessons that reflect common themes across a range of industries. Hopefully they will help you set out your own new year’s resolutions.
1. Sustainability = strategy
A recurring theme from our clients was the desire to strengthen sustainability as a core strategic framework, rather than viewing it as a standalone initiative. Many businesses are aiming to more closely align sustainability with their overall business objectives and decision-making processes, particularly within functions like finance. Developing a clear and structured strategy was seen as essential to making sustainability an integral part of business decisions and long-term planning.
A challenge noted by several clients was ensuring that sustainability targets are not only robust but also clear and understandable for stakeholders. Balancing regulatory compliance with effective storytelling remains a priority.
2. Getting to grips with data
Improving the quality and accessibility of sustainability data was another prominent focus. Many clients recognised the importance of gathering accurate data efficiently, especially given the challenges of managing complex supply chains or newly acquired subsidiaries. In some cases, data tracking remains highly manual and labour-intensive, highlighting the need for more streamlined systems to ensure consistent and transparent reporting.
3. Mainstreaming materiality
Materiality has long been in focus but is shifting into the mainstream, and businesses want to be able to count and compare their impacts, risks and opportunities to others in the sector.
This means not only identifying sustainability IROs but making them tangible and relevant to stakeholders, particularly from a financial perspective, and setting out a clearer understanding of their implications.
4. Keeping up with the regs – but not being led by them
Keeping up with evolving sustainability regulations remains an ongoing challenge. Clients are particularly focused on taking a pragmatic approach to compliance, identifying which requirements to prioritise and which to address more strategically. As new standards continue to emerge, maintaining clarity and accessibility in reporting remains a priority.
5. Prioritising culture in times of change
For businesses experiencing growth or acquisition, maintaining a consistent sustainability culture across the organisation can be challenging. To support this, we help our clients in developing structured onboarding processes to ensure that sustainability values are embedded from the outset. Engaging site and project-level teams and ensuring they understand how their work contributes to sustainability goals are critical for maintaining momentum and alignment.
6. Focusing on social AND environmental
Many clients recognised the need to strengthen their social impact reporting to better reflect their efforts and respond to external assessments. Social impact often risks being overshadowed by environmental metrics, when they should be seen as interactive and supporting one another.
What next?
If these resolutions resonate with you, or you have a unique set of sustainability challenges to tackle in 2025 get in touch with our experts.
We can help shape your own sustainability resolutions and work together to develop practical, impactful solutions.
Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash