Corporate Sustainability Driven By Leadership But Gaps Persist In Workplace Adoption: Report

At least 47.6% of senior management leads sustainability initiatives, mainly focusing on energy-efficient systems. Resource conservation follows at 47%, while 30.8% prioritise hybrid working models, according to the Economist Impact report, Transitioning to Sustainability: Employee Perspectives on Workplace Practices, sponsored by Kyocera Document Solutions.

“Most workplace initiatives have long been driven from the top down. But I do see this beginning to change as a greater focus on authentic leadership development, working in parallel to generational transition, starts to show visible effects.” Jody Ono, adjunct professor, Hitotsubashi University Business School, School of International Corporate Strategy, Tokyo.

The report challenges the generational myth that younger employees prioritise sustainability. It found that 41.3% of senior executives consider an organisation’s ESG reputation when job-hunting, compared to just 24.4% of junior employees. Rising living costs and job insecurity push younger workers to focus more on financial stability than sustainability concerns.

This challenges the common belief that young people care more about sustainability than older generations. Economic pressures may explain the discrepancy. “The cost of living is affecting everyone, particularly in Europe and the UK, where the economy has remained largely stagnant. It’s not surprising that  younger people are now trying to focus on getting into the workforce and working for a sustainable company may not be priority number one,” says Sandhya Sabapathy, UN CSW delegate and founder and and chief executive, Kaleidoscope, London. The same is true in Tokyo, says Professor Ono. “Salaries in Japan, even in Tokyo and even at major companies, are comparatively low compared to peer cities globally. While sustainability is important for young people here, it’s understandable that they may not want to take a pay cut when they’re already not making much,” she argues.

 According to the International Labour Organisation, most young people lack regular, secure employment, and insufficient growth in decent jobs is leading to anxiety and instability among young workers. “This speaks to the hierarchy of needs,” says Platau Wagner. “What it really tells me is that there isn’t a lot of job security out there. People are putting their own financial security over other aspects that may be relevant to them.”

Corporate sustainability remains largely top-down, with only 14% of junior employees embedding sustainable practices into daily work and 15.2% advocating for broader sustainability measures. Senior leaders also bear the burden of commercial trade-offs, with 27.3% citing them as a major barrier to sustainability, a concern largely absent among junior staff (4.1%).

However, sustainability is emerging as a key talent magnet. Senior leader priorities give sustainability 18.4% over the next 12 to 18 months, whereas junior staff put its priority at 13.7%. The three-to-five-year outlooks raise these percentages to 24.8% and 22.2%, respectively. The growing impact of sustainability on workforce dynamics manifests itself in this disparity.

Moving from perception to become a plank of a corporate strategy, sustainability is often represented as the gold standard of responsible development. The true story, however, is much more complicated. The ESG agenda finds itself being the target of political storms and organizational inertia; meanwhile, many corporations are left asking how to set valid targets and how to translate them into outcomes.

The disjuncture also finds some echo within organizations, in which the understanding of sustainability diverges between corridors and lunchrooms. To explore these dynamics, Economist Impact conducted a survey of 630 employees from small to global corporations based in London, New York, Singapore, Sydney, and Tokyo.