Embedding sustainability in your organizational culture

How to Embed Sustainability into Your Organizational Culture
Sustainability is no longer just a separate pillar of business operations – it is increasingly becoming part of the way we do business. To truly embed sustainability in your organization, more is needed than policies or reporting. It requires a cultural shift.

If you want sustainability to exist not only on paper but also become firmly anchored in your daily processes and decisions, it starts with your organizational culture: the way people within your organization do things, based on shared values and expectations. Culture shapes behavior and decision-making and gives your organization its identity – that sense of how do we work together? how do we take decisions? This culture does not emerge top-down, but through daily habits, collaboration, and repetition.

So, what is a sustainability culture?
It is a shared awareness within your organization about the importance of balancing profit-making, ensuring equal opportunities, and respecting the environment. In organizations with a strong sustainability culture, people broadly share these beliefs – and act on them.

The UN Global Compact Progress Report 2024 shows that there is often a gap between ambition and practice. 98% of CEOs of large companies acknowledge that sustainability is crucial for future success. Yet only 55–75% say they have actually integrated sustainability into their daily operations. Our own analysis of AEX-listed companies confirms this picture: many organizations want to move forward but struggle to anchor sustainability in their culture.

 
Discover Where You Stand with the Culture Scan
To address this, we developed the Culture Scan – a practical tool inspired by the work of Dr. Stephanie Bertels, Lisa and Daniel Papania at Simon Fraser University, and Embedding Projects. The scan helps you uncover where sustainability is already alive in your organization, and where there are still opportunities to strengthen the culture.

The Culture Scan is built around 46 concrete practices, and offers insights based on two guiding questions:

1.What are you trying to achieve? Each practice supports one of two goals:

• Existing commitments – Practices that help deliver on current sustainability goals and obligations.
• Innovation – Practices that create space for experimentation, improvement, and long-term sustainable innovation.

2. How do you approach it?
Practices can also be categorized by approach:

• Formal – Formal culture-building shapes behavior through rules, systems, and procedures. The aim is to capture informal values and habits in documents such as codes of conduct, procedures, training, and programs.
• Informal – Culture elements such as stories, leadership, habits, and social norms that influence behavior without being written down. Informal culture-building happens through shared values and actions. Through example, experience, and dialogue, habits emerge that support sustainable goals.

Four Types of Practices that Shape Culture
These two dimensions (intention and approach) together create a framework with four types of practices:

• Building Capacity for Change (Formal/Innovation):
  Structures and programs that encourage innovation, such as spaces for experimentation or collaborations.
• Creating Momentum for Change (Informal/Innovation):
  Stimulating curiosity, space and courage to try, and role modeling that make renewal possible.
• Fostering Engagement (Informal/Existing Commitments):
  Leadership behaviors, symbols, or rituals that reinforce existing sustainability policies.
• Clarifying Expectations (Formal/Existing Commitments):
  Policies, KPIs, reporting, and management systems that ensure compliance with existing goals.

With this scan, you’ll get a clear overview of where your organization stands in each of these areas. You’ll discover where strength already exists in your culture and which additional practicies can have the most added value.

Why this works
Cultural change isn’t about one big gesture — it’s about the many small signals, actions, and decisions your people make every day. The Culture Scan provides you with language, insight, and direction to intentionally build a stronger sustainability culture — in a way that fits your organization and its context.

Curious about where your organization stands?
We’d love to explore it with you. Get in touch for an introduction or a no-obligation explanation of the Culture Scan.

Ulrike de Jong | +31651072464 | ulrike@toscatribe.nl