Amid heightened expectations to be ‘doing the right thing’, there’s increasing pressure on sporting organisations to help drive meaningful action around sustainability.
While this premise makes good business sense and sport has the platform to influence stakeholder behaviour, sustainability can be a complex and multi-faceted subject that has not always sat side by side with the sporting industry.
The word sustainability conjures a wide range of thoughts and expectations when linked with sport.
Many gravitate to all things environment when you mention the word.
While the environment is important, sustainability in sport also includes its funding models, partnerships, performance, community support, athlete attraction and retention, facilities access and operations, staffing and volunteers.
These are fundamental to underpinning the long-term sustainability, and success, of a sporting organisation.
Stakeholders are a critical component for achieving this, requiring thoughtful communication if you want to engage their loyal support.
This usually starts with being able to clearly demonstrate the alignment between an organisation’s strategy and its sustainability plans, and how they will interplay in achieving its overall goals and objectives, both on and off the field.
In the context of sport and indeed most industries, sustainability should not be treated as a checklist of initiatives; rather, the mindset should be the delivery of outcomes in a consistently sustainable way.
There are five key principles to successfully communicating with stakeholders.
From the outset, be more strategic in the way you develop and shape your communication plan. Map your stakeholders according to their needs and understanding and identify your objectives with each group.
In sport, these stakeholder groups might include fans (which will breakdown further by demographic), partners, sponsors, governments, local communities, staff, volunteers and the athletes.
What action do you want them to take when it comes to sustainability? What do you need them to think or feel?
Once you have done that, you will be better placed to consider the specific messages you want to communicate to each group and through the channels that will reach them, be they social media, traditional media, direct marketing, advertising, events or activations.
The next step to achieving cut through is to make a meaningful connection between the subject you are promoting and the stakeholder you are trying to reach.
A great way is to apply a ‘human face’ to the cause and make a connection through real impacts.
Sport is better placed than most industries to put a recognised and respected personality towards a specific cause or initiative to help connect and influence stakeholders.
The next critically important component of a cause-driven communication plan is to demonstrate authenticity.
Being honest and recognising your sustainability effort, so far, will be rewarded by stakeholders.
A credible approach is to share what has worked for you, being transparent about what has not worked and, importantly, what’s next on your agenda.
Be very specific about why your sporting organisation is on the sustainability ‘bandwagon’ and how being more sustainable will directly impact on the health and well-being of your athletes, staff and their families.
Explain what it means for job security to have a more sustainable business model and, by extension, the economic impact your organisation will have on the community around you.
Wherever possible, avoid motherhood statements and generalisations, which will only lead your audience to lose interest and switch off.
Find ways to empower your audience.
It’s well understood that involvement usually leads to action.
Provide your audience with a call to action to get on and deliver the strategy, or involve them through working groups, both internal and external, forums, surveys and workshops.
The very act of asking stakeholders to become involved shows you value them.
When people feel valued, they lean in and engage, and that will be a positive step to achieving meaningful action.
• John Gardner has spent more than 25 years consulting to the business, NFP and sporting sectors
