When the going gets tough - resilient businesses
How do you make your business as resilient as possible and prepared for success in a changing world?
That’s the topic of the latest Elevate Series Business Lunch, hosted by Queenstown Business Chamber of Commerce and Queenstown Airport.
BECA’s NZ managing director Andrea Rickard, Air New Zealand’s Chief Sustainably and Corporate Affairs Officer Kiri Hannifin, and Auckland Airport’s Chief Strategic Planning Officer Mary-Liz Tuck, are on deck to share their Strategies for a Resilient Business Future.
The lunch, MC’d by Queenstown Airport’s Sustainability & Corporate Affairs General Manager Sara Irvine, is the last of four Elevate sessions this year.
Chamber CEO Sharon Fifield says they’ve been valuable to Chamber members and attendees.
“We’ve loved working with Queenstown Airport on this and it has been a strong combination of speakers and topics; business connection with the community, how we prepare for the future and be more resilient, what makes for a great customer experience, and sustainability,” she says.
Fifield says businesses now more than ever need to consider their environmental and corporate social responsibilities as part of their business planning, and it is a learning process for all.
“This not only benefits the wider community but also plays an important role in attracting and retaining employees,” she says.
But, she says, in tough economic times, ensuring the businesses itself is sustainable has to also be a priority.
“You need a viable business, right, in order to think about how you can actually implement sustainable practices. That’s something at the Chamber we’re focused on, how to best support businesses in that space.”
With that in mind, here’s what the three speakers have to say on the challenges of environmental sustainability:
Andrea Rickard MD at Beca
Making our own business more sustainable is something we directly influence through our culture and values, and our everyday choices, such as energy consumption and emissions from our vehicle fleet. We move to our new global headquarters early next year and this will be a six star green building in Wynyard Quarter in Auckland, with modern end of trip facilities to enable our people to make active travel choices to and from work. The more challenging, and incredibly rewarding, opportunity is actually in how we collaborate with our clients and partners in exploring new technologies and innovative solutions that make progress towards a low carbon future. This is challenging because it requires thinking beyond status quo, bringing different people and ideas together in different ways, and that can be uncomfortable. Examples are our clients who are part of the ecosystem of transitioning to more sustainable, renewable energy sources, and those who are already grappling with impacts of climate change on vulnerable communities, built infrastructure and the environment. These are the projects that make a real difference to our communities, and which our teams at Beca love being part of.
Mary-Liz Tuck, Chief Strategic Planning Officer at Auckland Airport
Auckland Airport has a long history of sustainability, dating right back to 2008 with our first sustainability policy. This has meant that sustainability is well embedded in our organisation at all levels, and we are seeing great results across our strategic areas, particularly our direct carbon emissions, waste in the terminals and diversity in leadership roles. Our focus is now on working with the industry to decarbonise aviation and an airport’s role is to ensure the right technology is in place at the right time to allow our airline partners to decarbonise. But the technology has a lot of uncertainty, and our challenge is that we don’t know what technology will be needed or when. We need to plan for all possible solutions and be ready to implement them when required. Collaboration across the aviation sector is key to overcoming the challenges that will be faced as aviation seeks to decarbonise.
Kiri Hannifin, Chief Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Officer at Air New Zealand
Addressing the causes of climate change is one of the most urgent issues facing humanity. The world must decarbonise quickly. Aviation is one of the most difficult sectors to decarbonise. While we know Air New Zealand will require a combination of alternative aviation fuel and next-generation aircraft to decarbonise, the scale and technology of those alternates need to dramatically advance over the next decade for the airline to reach net zero by 2050. This isn’t something that can be achieved alone. It can only happen with collaboration across government, fuel suppliers, aircraft developers, and airlines. A thriving tourism industry is very important to New Zealand and decarbonising it is vital for its continued success into the future. We are acutely aware of this at Air New Zealand and will continue to do everything we can to reduce our carbon emissions across our operation as quickly as possible.
