Social Sustainability: How to Build a Responsible Workplace

Social sustainability involves the creation of policies that mitigate social inequality and promote equal opportunities for all humans to live a high quality of life, regardless of their socioeconomic or cultural backgrounds. Building socially sustainable communities and institutions requires the executive bodies to factor equity, diversity, human rights, social cohesion, and labor rights into all decision-making processes and value chains. These tactics aim to create a better social climate for current and future generations.

Social sustainability is one of the three areas of sustainable development, along with environmental sustainability (which promotes mitigating climate change and protecting natural resources and biodiversity within the global ecosystem) and economic sustainability (which involves creating economic growth without sacrificing environmental or social responsibility).

In 2015, the United Nations outlined seventeen specific sustainable development goals (SDGs) across all three pillars of sustainability. The SDGs relating to social sustainability tackle topics like poverty, hunger, public health, quality education, gender equality, decent work and economic growth, inequality, and social justice.

It’s important for institutions to practice social sustainability for many reasons, including:

• Builds a more productive workforce: Social sustainability improves employee morale, leading to a more productive and engaged workforce. Learn how to boost morale.
• Positive consumer reputation: Consumers are more aware than ever of the social impact of the businesses they choose to patronize. This awareness makes them more likely to work with a business that prioritizes a good quality of life for its employees and less likely to work with ones that don’t.
• Creates a more secure supply chain: Prioritizing the well-being of workers helps prevent supply chain disruptions. Providing workers with proper training, a living wage, and safe working conditions decreases the chance of product defects and staff shortages. Learn more about the supply chain.
• Improves risk management: Companies ignoring social sustainability are more likely to create inferior products or make costly mistakes that can harm their long-term economic growth. For instance, suppose a shipping company forces its truck drivers to drive unreasonably long hours without rest. This decision increases the risk of a sleepy driver getting into a costly accident resulting in employee and/or civilian casualties, destroyed goods, and decreased sales due to bad publicity.
• Lays the groundwork for other aspects of sustainability: Organizations often overlook the social dimension of sustainability in favor of economic and environmental issues. However, addressing economic and environmental concerns without first building social capital and prioritizing basic human needs can make a company fall short of its full positive potential.

If you want to start a social sustainability campaign in an organization or community, here are some primary issues to emphasize. Look to address these issues for both internal and external stakeholders.

1. 1. Diversity: Striving to make sure an organization’s workforce represents a diverse group of genders, races, ethnicities, and cultures is vital. Building a diverse company community that encourages and accepts diverse points of view prevents the organization from developing an exclusive culture and philosophy.
2. 2. Quality of life: One of the core tenets of social sustainability involves improving the quality of life of employees, suppliers, vendors, contractors, and clients, which means advocating for access to quality physical and mental health benefits, affordable housing, job security, better education, and skill development.
3. 3. Social equity: One of the core tenets of social sustainability involves promoting fair, equitable policies for all. Working to address the needs of underserved groups improves the social and economic climate for all.
4. 4. Social cohesion: Social cohesion is a concept that builds shared values and strengthens relationships within a group. Brainstorming ways to create a tighter sense of community inside and outside your organization promotes human connection and strengthens overall well-being.

Here are some simple, actionable steps you can take to practice social sustainability in your organization.

• Cultivate a healthy work-life balance. Giving workers ample time to cultivate a healthy family and social life in order to heighten morale and prevent burnout. Consider instituting half-day Fridays, encourage employees to take mental health days when needed, or make it an option to work remotely from home whenever possible.
• Donate to a social cause. Philanthropy might constitute donating money to a worthy social cause, but it can also consist of donating services or goods. For example, a business that sells shoes might consider donating one pair to an unhoused person for every pair sold.
• Emphasize the importance of health and safety. Safe working conditions should always take precedence over any other business imperative, especially a company’s bottom line. Regularly inspect all equipment to ensure everything is in safe condition, and consider upgrading when safer options become available. Use caution when evaluating safety protocols and create policies encouraging employees who feel sick to stay home.
• Give back to your local community. Seek out methods to create positive community engagement that allows the company to engage with its external stakeholders. These methods can involve using supplies from local businesses and building partnerships with them, creating a program that rewards your employees for volunteering, or reducing your company’s environmental impact.
• Partner with advocacy groups. Your organization can work with many general labor rights and advocacy groups to create a better work environment or improve specific issues. For instance, a business could work with a disability advocacy organization to make its workplace more accommodating for those with disabilities.
• Prioritize diverse hiring practices. A diverse staff is a key element of building a socially sustainable business. You can achieve this by setting diversity hiring goals, expanding your recruitment net to incorporate a more diverse talent pool, creating policies and employment opportunities appealing to diverse candidates, and using more inclusive language in job postings.
• Prioritize employee rights. Establish initiatives to ensure that your business is not sacrificing employee rights in favor of economic growth. Guarantee your employees a living wage, equal pay for equal work, reasonable hours, paid sick leave and holidays, and other basic rights.

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