Sustainability at Advice

Our Sustainability framework

Let’s start with honesty: We are just getting started. In fact, we think our industry – the creative and professional services industry – has been slow to acknowledge the importance of its own impact on sustainability.

We must explore new ways to actively contribute towards and hasten the sustainable transition. Not only in regard to climate, although that is the most urgent agenda, but across the breadth of sustainability with respect to the UN's 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

At Advice we have chosen to engrain sustainability into our strategic ambition.

On an operational level, we work with sustainability in four dimensions:

  1. Housekeeping
  2. Business Approach
  3. Contributions
  4. Philanthropy

1. Housekeeping

This is where we look at ourselves as a company: What are our ethical guidelines? How do we buy goods and sort waste? How do we transport ourselves? Where are we in terms of diversity? And what certifications do we have?

In this dimension we work with:

  1. Environmental policy
  2. An ethics code
  3. Waste sorting
  4. Goodwings – travel climate compensation
  5. Climate friendly cleaning
  6. Environmental certification of procured goods (Svanemærket, FSC)
  7. Reduction of plastic programme
  8. Eco-labelled food delivery and vegetarian days
  9. Structured workplace assessment procedures and organisation
  10. A whistleblower system
  11. Gifts from People Like Us (socio-innovative brewery)
  12. Employee treats purchased from small local businesses

Furthermore, we are in the process of obtaining a B Corp Certification.

2. Business Approach

This is about which customers and projects we undertake. More importantly, it is about how we influence our clients – which methods we use to help and nudge them to make sustainable choices.

In this dimension we work with:

  • A screening system that filters new clients according to our ethics code and sustainability standards, including a deny-list of sectors we do not want to engage
  • An assessment tool for existing and new clients to give nuance to more complex cases
  • A set of unique methods and frameworks to build sustainability questions into all our projects
  • Structured onboarding of all employees, including deep-dives into our methods
  • Shared cases every Monday morning in an all-staff session
  • Bi-weekly Advice University for all staff with deeper cases, perspective, and education

3. Contributions

At Advice, we believe in a shift in balance from crafting stories and conversations towards developing actual contributions to society, customers, and businesses.

It is easier said than done. But we have made some contributions we are quite proud of. We were among the first to develop and publish a free Sustainability Barometer in Denmark, which measures Danes' knowledge and attitudes towards sustainability every year. The latest publication can be found here. And we have a new one on the way.

We founded the start-up SundhedsTV, a health media platform that fights the massive amounts of health myths and fake news by presenting the most searched and most critical health topics in easy-to-understand formats, which are quality-checked and approved by health professionals.

We also founded Kommunikationsforum, a media and knowledge sharing platform for communications professionals and students in Denmark. For many years, the company has been independent and today it is owned by JP/Politikens Hus.

4. Philanthropy

Each year we choose to support a cause with charitable work or other resources. In recent years, we have been working with an organisation for the homeless in Denmark. To this end we’ve helped redesign Hus Forbi, a newspaper which is sold by the homeless, and created a campaign to help fund homeless shelters during Covid19. Recently. we have also helped our client Unicef with ideas and concepts to support the Ukrainian people.

Sustainability at Advice model