Tad Radzinski Shares Tips on Corporate Responsibility in Recent Webinar

By Joshua Ayers, Senior Editor

Sustainable Solutions Corporation co-founder Tad Radzinski discussed insights into measuring the benefits of corporate responsibility programs and strategies for improving returns on sustainability efforts during a recent webinar.

The webinar, titled “Vision to Value—The Profit in Corporate Responsibility,” focused on the importance of a corporate responsibility plan and emphasized the key components such as, management commitment, education, implementation and data assessment that help can help corporations and organizations to be more successful and profitable in their sustainability efforts.

“There’s definitely multiple ways of becoming profitable when talking about sustainability,” Radzinski said. “Ultimately, what I try to focus on is trying to get different companies or organizations to make sustainability part of their everyday business strategy. It’s really important not to make sustainability [just] another program that people have to worry about and try to help you out with and track information. You want it all to be seamless and connected, and really part of the way you do business.”

Some of Radzinski’s suggestions for doing this include incorporating sustainability into the corporate mission and strategy and to emphasize education opportunity for clients and employees of all levels. With a plan in place, he says that experimentation with outreach, education seminars and contests will help companies figure out what works and what doesn’t, allowing the program to evolve.

Other elements of profitability with regards to a corporate responsibility plan include listening to customer feedback and preferences regarding sustainability, and to anticipate future limited resource availability and legislative pressures, as well as demonstrating success via corporate leadership, recording information and effectively communicating the results of those endeavors.

“Sustainability means thinking about the future and not just the present,” he said.

Applied to multifamily and commercial real estate, Radzinski says that it’s not just important to relay information such as energy savings from a recent lighting upgrade or HVAC automation upgrade, but to also publicize when those changes were made. This added tracking and record keeping can also be applied to purchases and products such as office supplies and paper usage, as well as resident surveys that help determine interest in green spaces versus non-green spaces.

“I really encourage anybody that’s doing any kind of sustainability work to get into the habit—and that’s the key here: a habit—of recording all information,” he said. “It’s great to have goals and metrics, but if you’re not measuring your performance toward that, it’s not really going to be very effective at being able to go back to management and say ‘hey we’ve done some great stuff here and here are the results’.”

In terms of communication and outreach efforts, Radzinski says that having prominent information readily available through newsletters, brochures or even a highly-visible link to information on the corporate homepage can help create a solid sustainability presence and help to reach new markets.

Getting into these habits allows for a company to gain an edge on competitors and helps to better position the company for potential future changes, specifically with regard to issues like sustainable legislation.

“Green building codes—and I say codes—are becoming the norm now,” he said. “Everything in green building was traditionally voluntary with the LEED standards, but now there’s a majority of new codes being developed that are going to require by law the green building habits.”

A sustainability program with visibility and results can also help to attract increasingly green savvy consumers and employees, which might not necessarily translate into profits, but certainly has social value.

“[Consumers] are really starting to demand more on green products and the information so they understand if products are green or not,” he said.

Radzinski wrapped up the seminar by suggesting that companies that are looking to create a program start small and, once it is established, to fund sustainability with sustainability by applying cost savings from the program into more sustainable measures.

“Even if you’re just trying to reduce paper use, that’s a really easy thing to do, [and] a simple thing that can happen with an organization,” he said. “It’s the means of getting people educated and gives you the ability to save money.”

The full “Vision to Value—The Profit in Corporate Responsibility” webinar, as well as other webinars on sustainability and corporate responsibility can be viewed on Tad Radzinski’s YouTube channel.