Conference chats, blogs, articles and newsletters on environmental and social issues have great intentions. But what do they actually achieve?
This was one of many conversations we had with Simon Burckitt, General Insurance Sustainability Lead at Aviva about the need to have real impact. We agreed these things were never going to move anything beyond a point of view, thought process or at the very most an idea. But that could and should change.
So in order to try and create this shift, we started our roundtables for Heads of Sustainability and Social Impact. The objective is to connect with peers facing similar challenges, to share ideas and learn from each other.
A previous attendee posted, “This time I got to meet new people from different sectors and I just love how engaged we all were. Everyone was ready and willing to be open about opportunities, achievements and challenges.
If you're a company that wants to build the right strategy, culture and skills to deliver sustainable, scalable impact I can't recommend these sessions and the Good Innovation team enough”
About the next one
Our latest report - 20 Conversations with Businesses Transitioning to be a Force for Good - summarises 4 of the biggest challenges we heard from in-depth interviews with leaders in Sustainability and Social Impact.
Our next roundtable focusses on the third challenge - making impact everyone's job - and how to authentically embed your purpose and impact across your organisation.
We're excited to be joined by Charlotte Goodman (MD Purpose & Vision/Chief of Staff for Holly Branson at Virgin) and Suzanne Smith (Senior Manager, Purpose and Community at Virgin Money).
Many companies talk to employees about their company’s purpose and impact, but very few actually empower them to play a role in delivering it. And that’s what Suzanne and her team have been able to do.
Ryan Bromley will be talking to both Charlotte and Suzanne about how they’ve gone about that, and the lessons they’ve learnt along the way.
The next roundtable takes place on 27th November, 2-5pm in Central London - location TBC. To sign up, please email ryan@goodinnovation.co.uk
Who attends?
Each roundtable we have welcomed around 40 leaders in Sustainability, Social Impact, ESG and Purpose from companies such as Natwest, Aviva, Balfour Beatty, Legal and General, BP, Currys, LV= and Virgin Money to name just a few. Whilst their job titles may vary, what connects them all is being leaders on the front line of helping their business transition to be a force for good.
About previous sessions
We kicked off in London in March 2023 with a group of purpose leaders in some of the UK’s biggest brands. The theme, ‘Return on Purpose’ resonated with the group.
In June we discussed the challenge of influencing and inspiring people across large organisations and particularly how to motivate leadership teams to invest both time and money to ESG initiatives.
In November, with the popularity of the London sessions growing, we welcomed a much bigger group and discussed an area that many of our participants had identified as a real challenge. How do you actually understand customer motivations and expectations on ESG?
Last March, kindly hosted by Legal and General, attendees exchanged challenges, thoughts and ideas on how to connect employees through a simple, consistent and compelling purpose narrative.
And in our most recent session in July, hosted by Beazley, we doubled our numbers again to talk about how to define the social problems you're uniquely placed to solve and how to find your return on impact.
We'd love to welcome you. Do get in touch.
ryan@goodinnovation.co.uk