TMT Insights – Successfully navigating your sustainability journey
Patty Minichiello, Global Brand Experience Manager, TMT Insights
Sustainability in the media industry is not only about reducing negative environmental impact but also about embracing innovation with responsibility. It’s about aligning a sustainability strategy with company goals, values, and operations. Yet, dealing with a large amount of vast and diverse sustainability data can indeed present challenges. Early in our sustainability program development at TMT Insights, it became clear that we can’t improve what we can’t measure and that a goal without a plan is simply a wish. As a relatively young company, we had a unique opportunity to build a sustainable foundation from the ground up and put our trust in the process, knowing that when you see it in motion, you start to see the benefits.
Right-fit partners
To make real progress in our journey and create visible change, we partnered with several organizations to guide our sustainability efforts. We were searching for insights and best practices to help us tackle and reduce our carbon emissions, as well as a system of efficient reporting that we could use to track and analyze data. We turned to Greenly, a platform that helps us measure, control, and reduce our environmental impact. With this tool, we can monitor key variables such as energy consumption, carbon emissions, and the use of natural resources in our daily business operations. It also recommends and vets educational resources to reduce and offset our carbon footprint sustainably. This tool is particularly approachable as it is without judgment and helps keep us accountable for our actions.
Going through a rigorous assessment with the DPP was also a rewarding exercise, which helped us identify opportunities for improvement and demonstrate commitment to environmental stewardship and social responsibility. It added even more depth to our sustainability goals to help us understand how to minimize our environmental impact. The DPP initiative is helping us track our progress in refining our sustainability policies and practices, and we proudly display the Committed to Sustainability mark.
Adopting more sustainable sourcing has helped us forge new relationships with sustainable suppliers and familiarize ourselves with ways to quickly assess a supplier’s sustainability practices so we can make informed decisions about our selections across our entire business.
Sustainable practices
At our core, we embrace cloud technology and have created a 100% remote or virtual workspace for our entire team. This approach reduces a great deal of inefficiencies, including unnecessary carbon emissions from transportation and office space energy use. Removing the drudgery of commuting, traffic, and exposure to low air quality certainly enhances our team’s health and work-life balance. We’ve also taken an intentional approach when we do meet as a team by combining meetings, opportunities, and celebrations into fewer events to be mindful of the negative impact of long-haul travel.
We also help our teams be environmental stewards by encouraging them to adopt sustainable practices at home, such as minimizing water usage, reducing energy consumption, and adopting sustainable transportation. Our goal is to promote an overall organizational culture of environmental responsibility.
Thoughtful strategies for tracking asset management have allowed us to monitor and manage the entire lifecycle of assets and provide us with an opportunity to repurpose them. This approach promotes reusing, recycling, and repurposing assets to minimize waste and extend their useful lives.
Transparency, education, and communication
It takes individual and collective action to follow a sustainability plan, and we’re committed to fostering a culture of continuous learning and sharing knowledge and experiences. By communicating with our team about our organization’s goals and ways they can actively participate in reducing our impact on the environment, resource scarcity, and social inequality, we’ve increased awareness and understanding and promoted transparency and accountability. It also fosters a sense of ownership, which fuels new innovative ideas and empowerment and amplifies the impact of our sustainability and DEI initiatives. We know that people are at the heart of everything concerning our environmental and social governance and that it is the only way to truly build a sustainable workforce and environment.
Sustainability is no longer an option but an imperative—our responsibility. It’s not a sprint, marathon, or checkbox; it’s a mindset. It can be embedded in processes and decision-making, measured in a company culture, and incorporated into new working methods. Consistent check-ins to track metrics are crucial for maintaining accountability, promoting transparency, evaluating progress, and making informed and data-driven decisions about your sustainability initiatives. Defining and measuring sustainability is challenging and may even be daunting, but the long-range benefits are clear. If you’re interested in learning more about TMT Insights’ sustainability approach, I’m happy to share.
Leveraging her experience from MetLife and Sony, Minichiello leads strategic initiatives to enhance employee engagement and uphold brand values at TMT Insights. She collaborates across all levels of organizations to create transformative and sustainable workplace cultures and can be reached at patty.minichiello@tmtinsights.com
