ICAS ICAS logo

Quicklinks

  1. About Us

    Find out about who we are and what we do here at ICAS.

  2. Find a CA

    Search our directory of individual CAs and Member organisations by name, location and professional criteria.

  3. CA Magazine

    View the latest issues of the dedicated magazine for ICAS Chartered Accountants.

  4. Contact Us

    Get in touch with ICAS by phone, email or post, with dedicated contacts for Members, Students and firms.

Login
  • Annual renewal
  • About us
  • Contact us
  • Find a CA
  1. About us
    1. Governance
  2. Members
    1. Become a member
    2. Newly qualified
    3. Manage my membership
    4. Benefits of membership
    5. Careers support
    6. Mentoring
    7. CA Wellbeing
    8. More for Members
    9. Area networks
    10. International communities
    11. Get involved
    12. Top Young CAs
    13. Career breaks
    14. ICAS podcast
    15. Newly admitted members 2022
    16. Newly admitted members 2023
  3. CA Students
    1. Student information
    2. Student resources
    3. Learning requirements
    4. Learning updates
    5. Learning blog
    6. Totum Pro | Student discount card
    7. CA Student wellbeing
  4. Become a CA
    1. How to become a CA
    2. Routes to becoming a CA
    3. CA Stories
    4. Find a training agreement
    5. Why become a CA
    6. Qualification information
    7. University exemptions
  5. Employers
    1. Become an Authorised Training Office
    2. Resources for Authorised Training Offices
    3. Professional entry
    4. Apprenticeships
  6. Find a CA
  7. ICAS events
    1. CA Summit
  8. CA magazine
  9. Insight
    1. Finance + Trust
    2. Finance + Technology
    3. Finance + EDI
    4. Finance + Mental Fitness
    5. Finance + Leadership
    6. Finance + Sustainability
  10. Professional resources
    1. Anti-money laundering
    2. Audit and assurance
    3. Brexit
    4. Business and governance
    5. Charities
    6. Coronavirus
    7. Corporate and financial reporting
    8. Cyber security
    9. Ethics
    10. Insolvency
    11. ICAS Research
    12. Pensions
    13. Practice
    14. Public sector
    15. Sustainability
    16. Tax
  11. CPD - professional development
    1. CPD courses and qualifications
    2. CPD news and updates
    3. CPD support and advice
  12. Regulation
    1. Complaints and sanctions
    2. Regulatory authorisations
    3. Guidance and help sheets
    4. Regulatory monitoring
  13. CA jobs
    1. CA jobs partner: Rutherford Cross
    2. Resources for your job search
    3. Advertise with CA jobs
    4. Hays | A Trusted ICAS CA Jobs Partner
    5. Azets | What's your ambition?
  14. Work at ICAS
    1. Business centres
    2. Meet our team
    3. Benefits
    4. Vacancies
    5. Imagine your career at ICAS
  15. Contact us
    1. Technical and regulation queries
    2. ICAS logo request

9 steps to being a better business in a post-Covid world

Better business
  • LinkedIn (opens new window)
  • Twitter (opens new window)
By CA magazine

3 June 2020

Mike's career

Education: Graduates in chemistry from the University of Sheffield.

2004: Joins M&S.

2004: Joins WWF’s Programme Committee.

2005: Made Head of Sustainabile Business, M&S.

2010: Joins the board of World Environment Center.

2019: Forms Mike Barry Eco consultancy.

2020: Joins A Blueprint for Better Business as trustee, and Clim8 Invest as strategic adviser.

Mike Barry outlines why now is a good time for all businesses to make changes and #BuildBackBetter

The Covid-19 crisis has shown starkly the urgent need for a better form of capitalism, one that works for citizen, community, society, planet and shareholder alike. While putting out today’s fires we also need to think about what comes next, how do we #BuildBackBetter? While many companies are still in a fight for their survival, a number of them are now saying: “We get the premise of ‘better’ but how do we do it in practice?” So here is a basic road map to a “better” business framed around three questions:

  • Why do I need to be “better”?
  • What do I need to change to be “better”?
  • How do I make “better” my way of working across all that I do?

Most companies that have been down this track over the past decade have run straight to the “what” question. 

What’s my science-based target? What social due diligence should I do in global supply chains? What target do I need to commit to if I’m to reduce energy use, water use, plastic use, etc?

And that was fine when social and environmental issues were perceived as peripheral to business strategy and day-to-day boardroom discussions.

Reputational issues to be managed on the edge of a business fighting to win in a globalised economy.

But no business will be able to meet the new expectations of citizens (and how they consume), policy makers and investors with this sort of tepid approach in the future.

You will have to be better in all that you do, all of the time, not just for the narrow benefit of those who participate in your self-defined value chain, but also much more broadly for society and the environment in general.

So the “why” and “how” questions become existential if you are to prove, transparently, that you are truly better in a questioning world.

“Why” puts social and environmental issues at the beating heart of your purpose, mission, strategy and customer proposition.

And “how” is the process by which the boardroom vision becomes day-to-day reality in all that you do, all of the time. So here are nine brief points on the why, what and how. (NB: there could easily be 99, but these are the key ones to start with.)


Why are we doing sustainability?

1. Be clear about your purpose.

There’s quite an industry in generating purpose, mission and values for corporates. Most feel like generic, derivative management speak.

The best ones align with a company’s heritage.

Listen deeply to your customers and employees. Ask them to shrink your company down to one word. At M&S it was “quality”, so Plan A added a new emotional dimension to quality beyond the functional.

Look at Blueprint for Better Business, the B-Corp movement and Julian Richer’s Good Business Charter for roadmaps to follow to make your purpose real.

2. Be on the right side of marketplace disruption.

Understand the rapid shifts (coal to wind/solar; petrol to electric; meat to plant/lab-based; throwaway to circular fashion) that bring better products and services to customers.

Don’t say, “Disruption is for everyone else, not me.” Every product will, in the next decade, be redefined through the sustainability lens.

3. Be a consistently bold and brave leader.

The CEO and board need to lead personally, internally and externally, championing their vision to be better all of the time, not just having a ghost-written foreword in the annual report.

4. Set clear bold goals to be better.

Articulate what your social and environmental footprint is and what you will do, not just to reduce it but to create net benefit too. Not just environmental but – too often forgotten – social (on tax, lobbying, privacy, zero-hour contracts, mental health etc) targets that are time bound and measurable.

5. Hold yourself to account.

Create a CEO-led governance system assigning clear accountability for delivery and supported by accurate, regular, granular management information on performance.

6. Be transparent about how you perform.

Report openly and honestly about your performance (see the Global Reporting Initiative). Look outwards and wherever possible use external benchmarks to baseline yourself, such as the World Benchmarking Alliance or Corporate Human Rights Benchmark.

How are you integrating sustainability into all that you do?

7. Engage your employees – be good for them in how you reward, develop and recognise their efforts.

If “better” is all that you want to do, it needs to be all that they do, too. Make it easy for them to get involved. Know what’s expected of them. Listen to their ideas – they will often be superior to yours! Train them in better business, for example through organisations such as the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership.

8. Engage your suppliers – know who they are, where they are, what they do.

Yes, set standards for them and measure their performance in exactly the same way you would measure your own. But focus on
unleashing their creativity, their ideas and their commitment to build better together, rather than treating it as a matter of compliance.

9. Be active participants in partnerships for change.

The economy is too big to change alone. You have to get off your own stoop and go and find platforms to drive change together, whether on a national scale (Business in the Community), globally (BSR, World Business Council for Sustainable Development); by sector (from Imagine’s Fashion Pact to the National Farmers Union) or by issue (WRAP Plastic Pact).


In total, engage your customers. They have to know you care. That you are committed to them, their family, their community, their society and their planet through all that you do.

Through your products, the service you offer, your physical presence in their neighbourhood, your contribution to the public good.

Your entire suite of communications (brand, product, social etc) needs to be tested for its ability to communicate what makes you “better” in an open and transparent way.

These nine steps to better business are not meant to be definitive but rather offer a broad roadmap to those many companies which want to do things very differently from today and be useful, relevant and better for the society they serve and the planet they depend upon.


This article first appeared in the June 2020 issue of CA magazine.

Read now

2022-11-mitigo 2022-11-mitigo
ICAS logo

Footer links

  • Contact us
  • Terms and conditions
  • Modern slavery statement
  • Privacy notice
  • CA magazine

Connect with ICAS

  • Facebook (opens new window) Facebook Icon
  • Twitter (opens new window) Twitter Icon
  • LinkedIn (opens new window) LinkedIn Icon
  • Instagram (opens new window) Instagram Icon

ICAS is a member of the following bodies

  • Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies (opens new window) Consultative Committee of Accountancy Bodies logo
  • Chartered Accountants Worldwide (opens new window) Chartered Accountants Worldwide logo
  • Global Accounting Alliance (opens new window) Global Accounting Alliance
  • International Federation of Accountants (opens new window) IFAC
  • Access Accountancy (opens new window) Access Acountancy

Charities

  • ICAS Foundation (opens new window) ICAS Foundation
  • SCABA (opens new window) scaba

Accreditations

  • ISO 9001 - RGB (opens new window)
© ICAS 2022

The mark and designation “CA” is a registered trade mark of The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), and is available for use in the UK and EU only to members of ICAS. If you are not a member of ICAS, you should not use the “CA” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to accountancy, tax or insolvency services. The mark and designation “Chartered Accountant” is a registered trade mark of ICAS, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Chartered Accountants Ireland. If you are not a member of one of these organisations, you should not use the “Chartered Accountant” mark and designation in the UK or EU in relation to these services. Further restrictions on the use of these marks also apply where you are a member.

ICAS logo

Our cookie policy

ICAS.com uses cookies which are essential for our website to work. We would also like to use analytical cookies to help us improve our website and your user experience. Any data collected is anonymised. Please have a look at the further information in our cookie policy and confirm if you are happy for us to use analytical cookies: