The Sustainability Dividend: A Primer on Sustainability ROI
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Sustainable Business Integration

The Sustainability Dividend: A Primer on Sustainability ROI

05 December 2024 / Report

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As sustainability becomes a business imperative, companies face growing pressure to determine the return on investment (ROI) of their sustainability efforts, a critical factor in gaining stakeholder trust and ensuring long-term success. This report highlights insights from a series of Member roundtables and polls, discusses the current state of sustainability ROI, and provides guidance for companies to get started.

Key Insights

  • Sustainability ROI extends beyond short-term financial gains by capturing long-term financial, environmental, and social value.
  • Discussions on the value of sustainability will continue, making it essential for companies to measure sustainability ROI.
  • Accurately measuring sustainability ROI can be challenging: corporate sustainability teams should start the process by aligning their language with that of the corporate finance function.
  • To fully capture sustainability ROI, companies should account for both tangible (easily quantifiable) and intangible (nonphysical, with harder-to-quantify monetary value) benefits, including those that may not be immediately obvious (hidden benefits).
  • Few companies are capitalizing on the power of authentic and transparent sustainability communication to showcase their sustainability results and gain internal and stakeholder support for sustainability.

As sustainability becomes a business imperative, companies face growing pressure to determine the return on investment (ROI) of their sustainability efforts, a critical factor in gaining stakeholder trust and ensuring long-term success. This report highlights insights from a series of Member roundtables and polls, discusses the current state of sustainability ROI, and provides guidance for companies to get started.

Key Insights

  • Sustainability ROI extends beyond short-term financial gains by capturing long-term financial, environmental, and social value.
  • Discussions on the value of sustainability will continue, making it essential for companies to measure sustainability ROI.
  • Accurately measuring sustainability ROI can be challenging: corporate sustainability teams should start the process by aligning their language with that of the corporate finance function.
  • To fully capture sustainability ROI, companies should account for both tangible (easily quantifiable) and intangible (nonphysical, with harder-to-quantify monetary value) benefits, including those that may not be immediately obvious (hidden benefits).
  • Few companies are capitalizing on the power of authentic and transparent sustainability communication to showcase their sustainability results and gain internal and stakeholder support for sustainability.

Authors

Nathalie Risse, PhD

Nathalie Risse, PhD Nathalie Risse, PhD

Former Senior Researcher, Governance & Sustainabil…
The Conference Board

Read Bio

Anuj Saush

Anuj Saush Anuj Saush

Head, TCB Advisory International
The Conference Board

Read Bio

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