Coming together on sustainability
Disagreement over who’s responsible for meeting sustainability goals could put executives and engineers at odds — jeopardizing success.
Engineers and executives largely see eye-to-eye on the external challenges they face in meeting sustainability goals, such as a lack of sustainable technologies currently available and the difficulty of ensuring sustainability across the supply chain. But when it comes to the internal challenges, each group thinks the other isn’t doing enough.
More than 70% of engineers say that their leaders haven’t provided clear direction on how to achieve sustainability goals. Another 47% said they often meet resistance from executives when they propose sustainable solutions.
Yet executives are more concerned about their organization’s technical abilities: 69% say that a lack of innovation from engineers is preventing progress toward sustainability goals.
Solving these internal challenges should be a priority, because they are factors that an organization can control.
What challenges does your organization face in meeting sustainability goals?
Executives
69%
Lack of innovation abilities in engineers.
Engineers
72%
Lack of direction from senior leaders.
TE Takeaway
"When an engineer creates a more sustainable product, it may come at a higher cost, or the performance might be compromised. When this happens, business leaders might accuse the engineer of not being innovative enough. It is important for executives to understand that solutions that can perfectly satisfy both sustainability and business goals are very limited for now. When designing new products, engineers need to keep in mind that the business must be financially sustainable as well – and the message of where this balance should lie needs to come from their business leaders very clearly."
Hiroshi Shirai
Senior Director
Advanced Technology