Importance of Sustainability in Decision Making Tuesday 10 October 2023 Presented by: Dr Lauren Tuckerman Content Description: This session will use insights from recent research projects to understand how the SDGs can be used in strategic decision making to frame and align sustainability with organisational goals. We will go through two examples, before a short interactive session stimulates your thinking on how to best use the SDGs in your strategic thinking. We hope that you will come away from this session with some tools that might support you towards sustainable decision making in your organisation.

1. Importance of
Sustainability in
Decision Making

2. Outline of today’s session
● Thinking about SDGs for strategy - why bother?
● Two examples of ways we’ve tried to engage with partners to do this
● Your turn
● Sum up and takeaways

3. Why we did the research….
● Innovation Caucus: works with Innovate UK
and ESRC to embed social science into the
innovation ecosystem.
● Challenge: Innovate UK familiar with
gathering economic impacts of their work but
had not been gathering data on the
environmental or social impacts of their
funded projects.
● Their question: how do we assess the
impacts of our funded projects…. tune in to
see how this changed during the project!
● Delivered by: Prof Alice Owen, Dr Kate
Ringham, Mr Steve Workman, Prof Tim
Vorley

4. But wait - I thought this presentation was about decision
making?!
● Typically SDGs used for reporting
● Limited involvement in decision making
● Embedding in decision making
● Greater impact - strategy is aligned
● Reporting on issues identified in advance

5. Goal
setting
Project
output
Project
outcomes
Organisation
outcomes
Goal
achievement
SDGs
Materiality
assessment
Measurement tool
Heat map
Time
Impact
Goal
achievement
with SDGs

6. Materiality
Assess importance of SDG in relation to national policy agenda
Assess importance of SDG in partner’s strategy

7. Results of materiality assessment

8. SDGs identified as material

10. Identifying and managing risk
By programme, tool
to review impact
across all SDGs,
identify potential
negative impact and
mitigate

11. Goal
setting
Project
output
Project
outcomes
Organisation
outcomes
Goal
achievement
SDGs
What if you
don’t
embed?
Goal
achievement
less aligned with
SDGs

12. Activity
● Work in groups of 4-5
● Pick a project to focus on that one of your group members has
significant responsibility for
● Use the worksheet to think about the materiality of each SDG to that
project and the organisation who is running it.
● Try to think through what is material for the organisation as a whole
and what is material for your specific project.
● Remember to answer the questions at the bottom of the page too.
● We will feedback at the end of the session.

13. What does this mean for you?
● Get ahead of regulation before it
dictates to you
● Embedding the SDGs in strategy
at the organisation and project
level is important
● Ensuring goals are aligned
requires this kind of looking at all
SDGs
● Getting consensus is difficult, but
collaboration broadens how you
think about the SDGs
So what?