Organising for Sustainability
Organising for Sustainability
As reporting expectations intensify, one powerful lever stays overlooked — how strategic organisational design can improve sustainability outcomes and streamline reporting.
In the evolving landscape of corporate sustainability, attention usually gravitates toward strategy, targets, and transparency. However, as reporting expectations intensify, one powerful lever remains overlooked: organisational design.
Sustainability implications permeate every facet of operations, from procurement to legal to logistics to safety and so on. To move beyond mere compliance, organisations must intentionally design their internal ecosystems to facilitate this work. Organisational design is not just an administrative task; it is a strategic imperative. A carefully curated internal structure that nurtures a coherent sustainability mindset may be the key to relieving your sustainability reporting headaches.
01Every C-suite tells a story
The composition of the executive team is the clearest indicator of corporate priorities. The organisation chart defines who holds power, who has access to decision-makers, and who is ultimately accountable. It also sends subtle signals about leader preferences and short-term targets.
The inner circle
If the CEO's inner circle is limited to the CFO and heads of profit centres, it signals a narrow focus on financial performance. While traditional, this becomes a liability if the organisation faces material sustainability risks — and a serious limitation if it relies on natural resources. A well-curated C-suite must reflect the company's risk profile as well as its strategic objectives.
For instance, if a company commits to Net Zero by 2030 because decarbonisation is a strategic imperative, the CEO needs a swift, two-way information channel with the teams responsible for delivery. Whether through a Chief Sustainability Officer or a dedicated Accountable Executive, the structure must ensure the CEO is fully informed of any performance gaps when answering to the Board.
- Is responsibility for non-technical risks shared evenly across the C-suite? Progressive reporting frameworks expect strategies for managing material risks, and that accountability sits at the highest level of the company.
- Do executives have the skills to accept accountability for sustainability risks and to effectively participate in materiality assessments?
- Does the C-suite have the resources within their specific domains to manage these risks?
02Is the tail wagging the dog?
Departmental titles and placement offer clues about a company's culture. Cobbled-together titles such as External Affairs, Internal Communications, and Risk often signal reactive restructuring, where functions are deemed too minor for dedicated leadership.
The impact on risk and influence
When critical functions like risk management are buried under unrelated remits, their internal authority is diluted. In sustainability reporting, the risk team is typically tasked with the materiality assessment and with monitoring or enforcing risk-mitigative actions across the organisation. If they lack gravitas, they will struggle to:
- Secure time with senior leaders.
- Enforce risk-mitigation actions across operations.
- Extract accurate data from disinterested or disconnected departments.
If organisational positioning is weak, sustainability professionals spend more time justifying their existence than driving performance.
- Looking across the sustainability agenda, do senior leaders understand which teams are mission-critical and thereby deserving of increased visibility across the organisation?
- Are departments named such that their mandate is clear and aligned with broader corporate strategy and objectives? How easy is it to find someone who provides specific data?
- Are departments positioned to allow them to easily operate cross-functionally?
03Breaking the silos: a case study in water
This is especially true of sustainability, given it is inherently cross-cutting. When functions are siloed, the narrative of the company strategy becomes fragmented. Consider the complexity of reporting on water management, for which contributions can come from a variety of sources:
- Risk: materiality ratings and risk-framework details.
- Environment: strategy (targets, risk mitigations), data (consumption, quality, intensity, recycling rates) and narrative (explanation of divergence from plan, events).
- Social Performance: community needs, water users (domestic, commercial, cultural), stakeholder engagement, complaints and grievances.
- Finance: CapEx on water infrastructure, and costs of fines / compliance.
- Legal: details on extraction permits / rights and ongoing proceedings.
- Health & Safety: emergency response (flooding) and on-site water safety.
- Procurement: water-efficiency criteria for procuring equipment, and supply-chain management.
Without structural alignment, these teams often compete for the same budget or duplicate efforts. When the organisation structure facilitates interconnection, it fosters a sense of shared ownership. This leads to proactive data collection throughout the year, rather than a frantic scramble a few months before the reporting deadline.
04The practical costs of ineffective design
Many organisations complain about the burden of data collection but, often, this burden is purely a symptom of poor design. Practical implications include:
- Dilution of authority: leaders cannot drive change if they lack a clear mandate.
- Reduced budget access: conflated mandates create false equivalencies, where sustainability initiatives lose out to essential spend.
- Suppressed transparency: unclear accountabilities lead to gatekeeping, where department heads may hide poor performance to protect their remit.
- Information silos: guarded mandates hinder the data sharing required for comprehensive ESG disclosures. Restricting access to databases on a departmental basis can create unnecessary bureaucracy and delays.
05Designing for impact
Strategic organisational design begins with education. The C-suite must understand that traditionally siloed functions are interconnected components of a holistic risk-management strategy.
Key questions for the organisation chart
- Who in the C-suite is accountable for non-commercial / non-technical performance?
- Is sustainability baked into the strategy, or is it an "add-on"?
- Which team is responsible for which part of the sustainability agenda?
- Is the team responsible for reporting positioned high enough to retain a corporate profile?
Structure is not a back-office concern — it is a tool for transformation. By intentionally organising systems around the reality of interconnection, companies can nurture a shared mindset that views sustainability as a holistic effort.
— Solenne SolutionsThis does more than just reduce the annual reporting headache. It keeps reporting grounded in operational reality, allows for more proactive risk management, and fuses sustainability into the bones of the company.
Audrey Hackett
Co-founder of Solenne Solutions, a boutique ESG and strategic communications advisory turning strategic ESG risk management into commercial value.
