In this day and age, the biggest mistake a leader can make is to forget that their business works first and foremost because of their employees.

We are talking here about employees in the broad sense, and not about certain categories more or less close to the strategic and decision-making processes. In today’s society, everything is linked, connected and interdependent and everything must be well oiled to act effectively, on a daily basis, and over the long term.

The eco-responsible business is one that breaks down silos to operate in networks.

As in human relations, the company must fully know and accept itself. How can a company – within a society where everything moves quickly and everything is known, locally and globally – innovate and serenely sell while being inconsistent with its internal compass?

An eco-responsible company is fully accountable and is ready to expose itselfand its employees, in order to take control of its strengths and weaknesses. In doing so, it becomes aware of its imperfections and able to appropriately mobilize and make a difference.

Basically, the employees are asking for just that — to be included in this process; to have a voice and set the table together to build a better future.

The most influential people in our contemporary world know it very well: to enjoy and give meaning to our recurring actions, we need to know where we are going. Like building a house, everything is born twice: in theory and then in practice.

Using the power of visualization, eco-responsible companies create the force of intention for the future.

By co-building their business of the future with managers, employees are already taking concrete action.

The future is played out as a team, and this is true for stakeholders in a business. By imposing new conditions and ambitions on its usual suppliers, by opening up to new business circles, by taking an interest in other ways of doing things, by accepting that its truth is ultimately not unique and necessarily the best, an eco-responsible company possitively disrupts its value chain and its entire ecosystem is affected.

If a business takes all of these steps, it will have come a long way, but the journey does not end here. This is where the strength of the network emerges and where it is essential to share, in order to progress further.

Continuous improvement is everyone’s responsibility in an eco-responsible company.

We have every reason to believe in the success of the «Grand Mouvement Écoresponsable», officially launched during the Rendez-Vous des Écoleaders on October 24, 2018 at the Granby Zoo, because it is pragmatic and ambitious.

Based on a program that has been thought through for more than 10 years and based as closely as possible on the concerns of businesses, this movement will create an exemplary and impactful difference that can be reproduced throughout the world in years to come.

This program was set up by the Council for Sustainable Industries and is directly linked to the Government of Quebec vision, which has the objective that by 2020, 30% of Quebec companies will have initiated an OSR (organizational social responsibility) process. It’s also in alignment with the orientations of the 2016-2020 Montreal Sustainable Plan, which aims to increase the number of environmental certifications by 30%.

The program includes tools intended to support companies wishing to improve, in a global way, their management of sustainability. The Level 1 Ecoresponsible Commitment certification was offered to the 15 SMEs of the 2018 SME Montreal Sustainability «Parcours».

 

The results are already convincing for the first cohort of the Parcours. More than 100 companies will be certified Ecoresponsible in the near future and discussions are already taking place between the Council for Sustainable Industries and regions in France.