Regardless of your enthusiasm for sustainability, if you are a small business owner in rented offices, you rarely have any say in how your building is designed or re-fitted to help reduce carbon emissions.  However, there are ways to achieve environmental savings in your day-to-day operations that reduce energy costs - and increase the wellbeing of your team. Letting customers know about your initiatives on waste is great for your reputation too.

Here are some small habits to put in place now, and ideas to build into your future plans, that will add up to big savings:

1. Equipment health-check
Use office machines with energy-star ratings, stand-by functions and for graphics, select those that will print on pre-used paper without fuss. When upgrading equipment, ask suppliers to ‘audit’ your operations for the best environmental outcome. Centralizing multi-functional devices – printers that also scan, fax, collate, bind and more – saves on machinery duplication, office space and power consumption.  Meanwhile, switch off monitors, computers and other machines when they are not being used, especially overnight and at weekends.

2. Desktop savings
Flat-screen monitors use one-third of the energy of traditional monitors and laptops use even less. “Screen savers” don’t reduce electricity use. Instead, enable “power down” settings or switch screens off manually if you are planning on being away from your desk for a long time.  Ask suppliers about power consumption levels and circulate the details to make your team aware too.

3. Check on your suppliers
Your supply chain conceals many hidden environmental impacts. Assessing suppliers’ practices is as important as turning the spotlight on your own. Try to make sure all purchases are necessary in the first place. Are quantities of your regular orders being wasted?  You should also seek out suppliers who use minimal, recycled packaging materials. Find out their policies on packaging, manufacturing and transport. What responsibility do they take for special disposal requirements, such as e-waste? Make your environmental objectives clear and screen new suppliers for sustainable practices or accreditation.

4. Reduce, re-use, then recycle paper
The paperless office never happened after all, but much can be done to ease paper waste. Set printer and copier defaults to double-sided printing if possible or, at least, encourage this option. Provide one paper collection tray for around every six staff, which is designated for re-use in photocopiers (by designated tray), notes and in-house drafts. Use the ‘properties’ function to print long documents at two pages per sheet to cut paper consumption by 50%. Cut and paste only relevant extracts from reports or memos when circulating information. Set aside a place for reusable envelopes and encourage people to use them.

5. More ways to reduce paper
Maintain efficient databases for your promotional materials by regularly updating lists and deleting duplicates. Offer electronic documents where possible and request the same in annual reports, catalogues and newsletters from suppliers. Encourage your staff to remove themselves from unwanted mailing lists. Share newspapers and publications and keep useful industry periodicals centrally filed for reference.

6. Lighting
Lessees are particularly restricted in taking initiatives with basic office needs like lighting and room temperature, but you may be able to take some actions. Turns lights off when not in use or install movement-sensors in bathrooms and meeting rooms and daylight-sensor lighting elsewhere. Energy-efficient bulbs cost more but reduce ‘hum’, flicker and carbon emissions. They also last far longer, saving inconvenience and money in the long term. Where possible, place workstations near natural light to reduce the need for task lighting and keep your team feeling happier.

7. Control your climate
Depending on your building, managing the office air conditioning is likely to be outside your control. However, you should at least insist on regular servicing of the heating, ventilation and cooling systems for maximum efficiency, better staff health and lower running costs. If you can control temperature settings, a very small decrease in winter and an increase in summer will pay off enormously in energy savings without a discernable difference in comfort.

8. Housekeeping
Waste, power and water savings are easily made in your busy office kitchen. Separate container and food waste if local rubbish collections allow for it. Run the dishwasher only on the ‘economy’ setting. Vending machines should be able to dispense into mugs and not just plastic cups. Lower the hot water temperature setting and use flow-restrictors to save water.

9. Report results
Communicating your sustainability goals and their progress is great public relations and may give you a competitive edge in your industry or region.

If your company is like most, you define profit as the difference between revenues and expenses. In recent years, however, there has been a growing trend to look beyond the traditional definition of profit and include the social and environmental impacts of operating a business.
The term ‘triple bottom line’ was coined in the mid-1990s and is a way of accounting for the effect a business has on people and the planet. Triple bottom line accounting, sometimes abbreviated as TBL or 3BL, is a way for organizations to attempt to go beyond measuring traditional profit and account for their impact on society and the environment. The term ‘sustainability’ is now commonly used to explain this holistic approach to looking at an organization’s overall impact.

Is triple bottom line accounting the choice for your business?

Let’s look at how your business might apply a TBL to its operations; we’ll consider three key areas - people, the planet and profit.

People

A business attempting to improve its TBL will have fair and beneficial practices towards its workers, its local community and the region in which it operates. For employees, practices might include fair salaries and wages, a safe and clean work environment, and flexible working hours when possible. A company following a triple bottom line will go beyond staff needs and contribute to the community in the form of sponsorships, donations, volunteering and educational initiatives.

Unlike measuring traditional profit, there is not a generally accepted way to measure this part of the triple bottom line. One standard that is gaining acceptance has been created by the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), whose mission is to make sustainability reporting by all organizations comparable to and as routine as financial reporting.

Planet

Sustainable environmental practices that minimize its negative impacts on the environment can in achieved in many ways. You  can reduce energy use by upgrading equipment and using alternative energy sources, such as solar. Toxic waste can be reduced by refining manufacturing methods.

 A printing company for example, can choose to purchase recycled paper or paper produced from sustainable sources such as plantation trees. A growing number of computer companies now offer to recycle the products they produce to prevent filling landfills with more computer waste. The environmental impacts of the triple bottom line need to be viewed across your entire supply chain − this means choosing partners and vendors who are willing to adopt similar behaviors to minimize their environmental impacts.

As with societal impacts, there is not a common way to measure an organization’s triple bottom line. Several alternatives for quantifying environmental impacts of operations have been created by the Global Reporting Initiative, CERES and Institute 4 Sustainability.

Profit

Profit under a triple bottom line is not the same as traditional profit, which doesn’t consider the impacts on people or the planet. Profit under a TBL is seen as the economic benefit a business creates for the entire society, not only for its owners. In seeking to maximize traditional profit, a business measuring a TBL will need to also look at its impact on workers, communities and the environment.

Choosing to Follow the Triple Bottom Line

The benefits of TBL seem to be strong; however there are many points to consider when deciding if it’s right for your business. Some experts believe that adopting a TBL will increase traditional profits in the long run. They argue, for example, that the favorable publicity gained by adopting a TBL will improve the image of the business among customers and increase sales.  Studies of Gen Y and Gen X suggests that these new generations of workers place a high value on companies that commit to good social and environmental practices, and thus the companies benefit from the perception that they are more desirable places to work.
Others argue that TBL can hinder a company in the market when competitors are only looking at traditional measures of profit. Another potential drawback is that a TBL adds another layer to their accounting system.
Companies that are socially responsible can adopt environmentally sustainable and community friendly practices without using a TBL. But these businesses won’t be able to measure and track their progress over time.
As the TBL grows in popularity, more companies will need to choose whether to follow it. We are also likely to find that in time many governments introduce legislation that forces companies to be more socially and environmentally aware. It can deliver many benefits, but you need to plan carefully and seek advice from your accounting business advisor before implementing a TBL in your business.

As every small business owner knows, the job involves playing a wide variety of roles - visionary leader, product innovator, sales rep, secretary to name but a few. But you may not have focused on one other role you play as you talk to customers, prospects, lenders and potential investors - illusionist. Often a deal can be won or lost on how big people perceive your company to be since for many customers size equates to how professional and solid it is - so conjuring up the impression that your business is bigger than perhaps it really is an important trick to master.

Give the business a definite identity

The only way to remain in business in this climate is to plan, but the days of the three to five year plans are over.  Instead focus on the next 18 to 24 months with lots of scenario planning and stress testing.

Build scenarios

Create a forecast for the next 18 months to 2 years. Take your business plan and then impose a series of scenarios. A business-as-usual scenario, for example, might have flat growth. Another scenario might project a 10% drop in revenue and a 20% increase in input costs.  These scenarios show you the effect on the business of outside forces, and allow you to develop contingency plans to mitigate their effect if you start to detect their impact through your monthly reports.

You might decide that if revenues decline for two or three consecutive months, then you will implement a stronger sales program. If that fails, then you might move to significant cost reduction activities. Look at what happens if the company loses customers and suppliers.

Include catastrophies like no sales for a year to see how long you have the cash reserves to keep paying staff.

You might need to draw up plans to create other ways of drawing revenue, like discounting, or going to other markets or changing production. Identifying a critical threshold means you can start thinking about how to mitigate it.

Develop your business plan

Critical to forecasting is your  business plan;  it should cover market analysis, organization and management, strategic analysis, marketing and sales, products and services, the amount of funding needed to start or expand the business, and financials. The best business plans are updated every three months.

Do you find when it comes to a choice between serving a paying customer and writing a business plan, like most small businesses, you go for the money? Lack of time is a major reason many small companies don’t have plans. The answer for some businesses is to prepare the plan on the weekend. It might take an entire day, but it's a worthwhile exercise.

Helpful tools

SMEs are at a disadvantage in this climate because, unlike the big corporations, they lack the resources and sophisticated tools that can make forecasts. But you can do certain things to plan ahead. Every business owner, even a small corner store operator, should be able to build a basic financial forecast model using Excel spreadsheets. It is really not that complicated. It's a very structured process where you look through the historical financial statements and the balance sheet history.  If necessary, attend an Excel training course and spend some time with your accountant getting help to set it up initially.

Talk to customers and suppliers

Stay close to your customers and suppliers.  They will often have good information in their own areas of expertise that can help you develop a sense of likely trends.  For instance, retail supply companies probably know quite a bit about customer buying behavior which can forewarn you about risks and opportunities in your own business.

Track targets and KPIs constantly

Going through the balance sheet every three months is simply not frequent enough in this climate. Prepare your monthly financials as close to possible to month end, and then run your stress tests constantly against the figures. Make sure that your key performance indicators, such as sales targets for each week, are in place. Analyze the month’s end financials comparing the actuals with your budget to see where you are performing well and where there are shortfalls.

Most business owners understand that they need to know their customers, but they usually rely on demographic data and statistical profiles. But success is about creating products for people, not statistics. Start by identifying a specific key customer; a person who buys enough of your product at a price that generates your best profit.

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