The Long View: Enabling Business Sustainably
The Long View is the AusTiger View
Thinking about the Long View is a matter of preference at AusTiger Hosting, but it’s also a matter of thinking about our corporate and individual responsibilities to build the kind of business that promotes sustainability among other businesses.
This is the product of trying to apply a broader perspective to our work as a key infrastructure vendor to Australian businesses, organisations and individuals. This broader perspective seeks to think about how we function as a business where our impact is measured across generations rather than years.
To say we are in business for the long haul is an understatement. To say that we want every enterprise, start-up, association and blogger to maximise sustainability within the bounds of their mission — and we hope everyone’s vision is forward-thinking — is also an understatement.
An Expansive View of Sustainability
Sustainability takes a number of guises, but all approaches consider a business’ or an organisation’s influence on the world through the lenses of environment, community, and employee/stakeholder well-being. Much thinking about sustainability focuses on the environment, which is the chief way AusTiger Hosting’s culture of sustainability is organised. This concentrates on ways to conserve or reinvigorate natural resources and reduce pollution to minimise a business’ or an association’s environmental impact.
Reducing your carbon footprint through planting, conservation, buying carbon credits, clean operation or all of these measures is but one way to ensure a legacy of the best possible future for generations to come. Another move is to foster a culture that engages meaningfully with your community to use your organisation to pass along a baton through volunteer work, pro bono education or in-kind contributions.
Yet another angle on sustainable operations is to work with like-minded organisations to build a supply chain that is fully sustainable. Amy Foo of ZenDesk recommends this tactic among others in her recent article for Business Insider Australia, 3 reasons why corporate social responsibility is a vital part of a successful business, “…enlisting social enterprises to provide services that your business is already paying for is a good way of giving back without incurring additional costs.”
Of course we endorse this last approach as a service provider and as part of a holistic approach to sustainability. (If you haven’t given AusTiger Hosting a look and you don’t know anything about or green hosting, feel free to have a look around our website).
The Bottom Line
There are more ways to approach sustainability than we can enumerate in a single article. That’s why sustainability is an evolving, continuous process. You can do everything from creating a hyper energy-efficient office, install solar panels, develop a community service policy for your business, donate time or material, compost — the list is endless.
Most importantly, you must seek out, cultivate and work with like-minded businesses and organisations that can help you achieve your commercial and your sustainability objectives. If you want to reach out to AusTiger for services or simply to advance the sustainable community concept, reach out to me (Jeff Pond) at info@austiger.com.au.