Making a business sustainable requires not just viable technical solutions, but effective planning, strategic alignment and cultural acceptance. Sphinx offers valuable management tools to streamline the integration of sustainability into the way you do business.
Sphinx helps executives successfully navigate the adoption and integration of sustainability best practices. Our practical, affordable and scalable solutions are equally effective with corporations, as well as small and middle market companies operating within corporate supply chains and the local community.
Solutions
- Our approach to sustainability is practical, affordable, team friendly and grounded in the business case for organizational sustainability.
- Our outlook sees each client as unique; therefore, all sustainability solutions are tailored to the specific needs of the client.
- Our focus is to fully support each client's need to drive performance and marketplace results through coordinated sustainability initiatives.
- Our goal is to help each client integrate triple-bottom line sustainability principles into daily operations and corporate communications to ensure maximum competitive advantage and cost savings are realized.
We provide the following tools and services:
- > SCORE (Sustainability Competency Opportunity Rating and Evaluation)
- > SPaRK™ (Sustainability Planning and Reporting Kit)
- > The Climate for Sustainability
- > Sustainability Integrated Performance (Six Sigma)
Sphinx’s Sustainability Toolkit:
Sustainability Competency & Opportunity Rating & Evaluation (SCORE™)
SCORE™ is a sustainability assessment that can help you determine where your organization is on the road to sustainability while also identifying new opportunities. SCORE includes nearly 100 common business practices and is organized by functions that practically all organizations have, making it easy to assign responsibility. It helps departments understand and fulfill their commitment to organizational sustainability goals and market outcomes. Each practice provides three levels of benchmarks so you can see where you are now and where you need to go long-term. SCORE was developed by AXIS Performance Advisors in conjunction with the International Sustainable Development Foundation and the Zero Waste Alliance.
SCORE™ includes special assessments for services, government and manufacturing, capturing special opportunities for each sector, and can supplement emerging sustainability rating systems and award programs. It also dovetails with The Business Guide to Sustainability, winner of the American Library Association’s award for ‘best academic titles in 2007, to provide frameworks, tools and strategies for improving your sustainability performance.
Three Levels of Service
- > Pre-SCORE™. Some organizations are so new to sustainability that rating themselves against the practices doesn’t make sense. Instead, they can use SCORE™ as an educational or planning tool.
- > SCORE™ as part of a full sustainability assessment. SCORE™ is only one part of the full-scale sustainability assessment we conduct. Through interviews, site visits, facilitated meetings, and a review of publicly available information, we provide a clear snapshot of your strengths and areas for improvement. This includes an evaluation of your buildings, waste streams, energy and greenhouse gases, chemical inventory, and environmental management system. We customize the approach to each client, but the milestones usually include the following:
- > Initial meeting to scope the assessment
- > Data gathering (review of policies, website, etc.)
- > Onsite assessment (meetings, interviews, site visits, etc.)
- > Report (includes written report and management meeting to review the results)
- > SCORE™ as a stand-alone assessment. We can also come to your organization, conduct SCORE™ and facilitate a discussion about the results. SCORE as a stand-alone service includes the following:
- > Scoping: An initial meeting to clarify your goals and choose the portions of the assessment you will take. We help you decide who should participate in the survey.
- > Facilitation: We come into your organization, administer the assessment, score the results, and build an action plan based on the results. This can be done in two 2-hour meetings (one to take the assessment and a second to discuss the recommendations) or in one half-day session.
- > Report: We produce a detailed report with recommendations. (an Excel file with your data, a Word or PDF report, a PowerPoint file summarizing the report findings and a copy of the companion book).
- Follow-Up (Optional): We recommend a follow-up meeting 6-12 months later to track progress and make appropriate changes.
SPaRK™ Better Ideas!
Sustainability Planning and Reporting Kit
SPaRK™, developed by AXIS Performance Advisors, is an easily replicated process for clients who want to implement sustainability, and get the process off and running quickly. SPaRK™ includes an Excel file with pre-formatted worksheets for common analyses and metrics. This is linked to an MS Word template to capture your Sustainability Plan and annual internal Sustainability Report so that charts and graphs in the Excel file automatically appear in the Word document.
Three Levels of Service
To develop a coherent sustainability plan, we guide clients through the following steps:
- Customized executive briefing on sustainability to educate executives about the risks and opportunities related to sustainability.
- Business case and strategy discussions to build an understanding of the strategic reasons for pursuing sustainability.
- Impacts assessment and priorities to identify the sustainability issues and impacts of highest importance and begin to identify projects to manage the risks associated with them.
- Baseline assessments to determine the metrics, baseline, and future vision.
- Identification of goals, projects and support systems to develop a long-term plan to reach sustainability.
- Creation of a draft template for sustainability reports to ease the gathering of data throughout the year.
Ask us to facilitate your SPaRK process or host a workshop to learn how to do it yourself.
The Climate for Sustainability
The Climate for Sustainability, a research collaboration guided by Dr. Anke Arnaud and Dr. James L Miles, Sr., is designed to measure and identify an organization’s readiness to integrate sustainability practices into daily operations creating a Sustain-centric business culture. By measuring staff awareness, values and character, as it pertains to sustainability, an organization can accurately allocate resources, build staff capacity and achieve best in class market performance.
Sustainability & Six Sigma
Discover how business-proven Lean & Six Sigma tools and techniques coordinated with your business' green or sustainability goals can provide a solid ROI. Sphinx offers practical strategies and techniques to implementers to improve environmental and energy results, including waste elimination, quality enhancement and efficient delivery of value to the customers. Learn to uncover hidden environmental wastes and hazards which often go unaddressed in other initiatives. Manufacturing and Service business case studies are also reviewed to illustrate how to achieve environmental performance goals while improving your costs, competitive position and reduce regulatory risks.
