COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Program ... Here is the full program for the 2012 New Metrics of Sustainable Business Conference. For more information on our esteemed panelists, visit the Speakers page.

Framework LLC - Aleksandra Dobkowski-Joy, Principal
BASF - Charlene Wall-Warren, Sustainability Lead North America
Bloomberg - Curtis Ravenel, Global Sustainability Head
In a world with tens or even hundreds of potential environmental, social and governance issues to consider, securing high-quality relevant sustainability data - for purposes of reporting, risk assessment or general management - can quickly turn into an overwhelming and resource-draining project all by itself. Therefore, identifying materiality is by necessity a fundamental and regular exercise in corporate sustainability. This panel discusses best practices in constructing materiality rankings.

11.30am: Happiness Surveys as a Key to Uncovering Material Drivers of Well-Being

The Personality and Well-Being Lab - Ryan Howell, Director
In a quest for reliable indicators of individual and organizational well-being, the last few years have seen a surge in research on happiness - its drivers, its relations to material possessions and money, and its impacts on health and work. An increasingly influential global group of economists, psychologists, marketers, designers and government officials are busy refining existing formulas for measuring and predicting happiness. Some leading countries and businesses already publish national happiness statistics in parallel to economic figures for a more complete assessment of prosperity. This presentation helps answer the question 'So what?' as you consider what goals to set and measures to adopt in your quest for a more sustainable business, and digs into the design of surveys used to produce happiness statistics, comparing traditional short-form surveys with longer ones studying multiple dimensions of happiness, with potential applications in any community or company. 12:00pm: Lunch Break 1.00pm: The Role of Leading vs. Lagging Indicators in Sustainability Planning MetaVu - Mark Serwinowski, President & Founder CRD Analytics - Michael Muyot, President & Founder Harvard University - Bob Pojasek, Professor of Environmental Science Independent Expert - Joe Wolfsberger, formerly VP EHS of Ingersoll Rand, Eaton and Baxter Healthcare Leading indicators of corporate operational performance can serve as a useful complement to more common results-based lagging indicators. Leading indicators, however, tend not to be applied in sustainability very much these days, arguably because sustainability teams often do not have much experience with them. This panel discusses the latest efforts to integrate leading indicators (both qualitative and quantitative) into the next-generation sustainability reporting standards and sustainable investing indices. 1.45pm: The CFO Agenda: Enabling CFOs to See Sustainability as Central to Core Strategy Jones Lang LaSalle - Lauralee Martin, CFO & COO How can sustainability managers get positive responses from their CFOs on a regular basis? What combination of factors will drive CFOs to understand and embrace the demands of a corporate sustainability journey? What can CFOs do to answer increasing investor pressures in favor of sustainability? These questions are commonly asked, yet too few companies seem to have satisfactory answers at this point. To help with this inevitable sustainability-driven CFO agenda, we are joined by a forward-thinking CFO who has been tackling these problems for years. 2.15pm: Incentivizing and Valuing Employee Engagement SAP - Jim Sullivan, VP Sustainability Management & Strategy REI - Kirk Myers, Corporate Social Responsibility Manager Pure Strategies - Robert Kerr, Co-Founder & Principal Walmart - Brittni Furrow, Senior Sustainability Manager Even the best and brightest corporate leaders might fail, if their employees aren't committed enough to drive a sustainability strategy forward. Embedding the right incentives across the whole organization, whether by adjusting employees' reward structures, implementing environmental accounting by department, or re-designing feedback loops, has been proven essential time and again. The case studies presented in this session share cutting-edge metrics-based innovation, top-down as well as bottom-up, in incentivizing new patterns of employee behavior. 3.15pm: Networking Break 3.45pm: Tools in Focus: The Evolving Landscape of Social Metrics PRé Consultants North America - J. Renée Morin, President Royal DSM - Jacobine Das Gupta, Corporate Sustainability Manager Over the last 20 years, methods have been developed to support product sustainability assessments, but with a focus on environmental impacts. Only minimal attention has been given to social impacts. Learn how several companies are working to harmonize an approach for evaluating the social impact on key groups involved along the value chain: employees, consumers, and communities. Hear from DSM how it has further defined social impact categories and has started its journey to integrate social impact evaluation into its business processes. 4.00pm: Tools in Focus: One Magic Number to Sum Up All Your Resource Inputs EnergyPoints - Ory Zik, Founder & CEO Energy Points brings to sustainability what Weight Watchers brought to nutrition: an intuitive, yet accurate ‘points’ system. It is based on algorithms that enable one-to-one comparison of resources such as electricity, fuel, materials, water and transportation, taking into account local factors such as emissions and water scarcity. The company's core competency is translating this complexity into a simple metric that enables optimal environmental decisions. 4.15pm: The Evolution of Sustainability Standards UL Environment - Libby Bernick, Vice President Timberland - Betsy Blaisdell, Manager of Environmental Stewardship EPEAT - Sarah O'Brien, Director of Marketing and Outreach CSRHub - Bahar Gidwani, Co-Founder & CEO It is not hard at all for a sustainability professional to get lost in a quickly expanding sea of proposals for sustainability standards, be they for purposes of reporting, certification, consumer outreach, or comparison across companies and industries. As we close New Metrics '12, we'll discuss where sustainability standards may be heading and why, and tackle the question, 'How should a business determine what relevant standards initiatives they should support and/or apply for?'