Sustainability Skills

Home What is sustainability? Sustainability in practice Operations

Operations

You might decide to target your day to day operations. This mightinclude areas such as measuring and reporting sustainability performance, operational resource efficiency, proccess improvement, supply chain decisions and waste management.
You could encourage employees to make energy savings and to find ways to make your processes more efficient. You could set up productivity and efficiency systems that target process waste and waiting time as well as waste materials.

Or you might work on a more sustainable supply chain taking into account the carbon footprint of materials as well as a supplier’s track record in ethical treatment of workers.

The day to day operations of your business are the ‘coal face’ for many sustainability activities. Operational employees have a crucial role in achieving business strategies. A sustainable business will encourage and respond to suggestions for efficiency improvements and other innovations.

Reduced waste in terms of time, material and unnecessary processes can be supported by skilled workers who are genuinely engaged with maintaining a viable business.

In turn they can be supported by clear procedures, consistent expectations and strong leadership.

Employees who participate in a workplace culture of respect and collaboration and who make suggestions for improvements are an invaluable resource to a sustainable organisation.

Management support is also critical so that procedures are applied consistently in areas such as occupational health and safety and waste management.

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This website and many of the products have been produced with the assistance of funding provided by the Australian Government; including through the Green Skills Agreement and the Clean Energy and Other Skills Package.