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Business is an unlikely hero: a force for good working to solve society's most pressing challenges, while boosting bottom line. This is social purpose at work. And it's a dynamic journey. Purpose 360 is a masterclass in unlocking the power of social purpose to ignite business and social impact. Host Carol Cone brings decades of social impact expertise and a 360-degree view of integrating social purpose into an organization into unfiltered conversations that illuminate today's big challenges and bigger ideas.
Carol Cone:
I'm Carol Cone, and welcome to Purpose 360, the podcast that unlocks the power of purpose to ignite business and social impact. Today we're revisiting one of the most important questions in the field of purpose and sustainability. Does doing good really pay off? Well? Would you like these kind of returns? Companies that lead in corporate responsibility can see up to a 6% increase in share price. Profitability can be up as much as 21% and as much as a 57% reduction in employee turnover and growth by two to 5% and growth by two to five times greater. Those are just a few of the metrics from this extraordinary new series in Project ROI that we are going to discuss today.
Joining me is Steven Rochlin, CEO of impact ROI and lead author of Project ROI 2025. He spent years quantifying what many of us have long believed. When companies lead with purpose, they don't just strengthen society, they outperform their peers. And the numbers that I've given you, and there are many more that we will discuss today they're not soft metrics. They're competitive advantages. Project ROI is a meta analysis of over 640 studies, mostly from academics but also from thought leaders that Steve as the lead author of Project ROI 2025 has conducted with some of his partners and he's going to dive deep into what did he find and what does it mean.
We're going to unpack the data, the framework, and the future revealing how purpose, again, no matter what you call it, ESG, sustainability, corporate purpose, corporate responsibility, when done right is the most powerful business strategy of our time. So let's begin. Welcome to the show, Steve.
Steve Rochlin:
Carol, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
Carol Cone:
So as my listeners know, I invested heavily in research from 1993 on to prove that this construct about linking companies and their strategies for citing the environment was strategic. So when I started hearing about Steve and when he came out with his first Project ROI in 2015, I was an immediate promoter of his work. So Steve, what I'd first love to know about is your background. As Purpose 360 dives deeply into our guests motivations and convictions what in your life contributed to your passion in your career? Why do you do what you do?
Steve Rochlin:
Well, Carol, before I answer anything, I've just got to say what an incredible honor it is to be having this conversation with you because when we talk about the business case for environmental and social performance, you are an OG.
Carol Cone:
Oh, you're sweet.
Steve Rochlin:
You were one of the first to conceptualize that you could do well and do good and actually apply it in incredibly impactful ways. So this is really a thrill to have this conversation with you right now. So when I think about my passion, it was really instilled the values from my parents who were committed to social justice in their personal and professional lives and really became captured and enamored by this idea of the role that business played in society. And when I got my first job in the field as head of R&D for the Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship, the very first day we had our board meeting, which was chaired by the then CEO of Clorox, Craig Sullivan, who pulled me aside and said, "Kid, if there's one thing you do," he said, "you have got to either prove or find out that it doesn't exist, that there's a business case for all this do-gooder stuff." And that really set me on my Melville and Moby Dick type quest to see whether or not there's a there there.
Carol Cone:
So I would like to talk about the predecessor of this year's report, which we're going to focus on mostly. But what was Project ROI 2015 and what was in it and what inspired you to do that, and then what inspired you to do the update?
Steve Rochlin:
So a couple of companies approached us for the 2015 and said, "We keep going through a Groundhog Day. One of our more conservatively and skeptical oriented members of our board will send us some kind of study or some kind of column for the Wall Street Journal or elsewhere that says this stuff about environmental and social performance in companies is communism under a different name. You need to stop immediately. And then we'd respond by giving them four or five different studies, including your fantastic surveys, and see if we could quell them." And so they approached us and said, "Can you tackle this and can you resolve it?" And that really led to Project ROI and the great relationship we had with some of the team, Cheryl Kiser and Richard Bliss at Babson College. And we dove in to see if we could answer the question.
Carol Cone:
Excellent. Excellent. Normally the show might be for an industry or here's about employee engagement, but this is for everybody. This is really going to arm everybody with approaches and such. So it's really, really important.
So when did you decide to, okay, we're going to bring this back. We're going to do another 10 year, we're going to evolve the methodology We did, you decide to do the second Project ROI in your series.
Steve Rochlin:
It's a little over a year ago, and you're really hitting some of the key points in terms of the atmosphere. One of our clients called us up and said, "We're really starting to feel ..." This is even before the election. But as we all know in this field, the political backlash started a couple of years ago, and one of our clients called us up and said, "We're really starting to feel this. We're getting pressure from all sides." And said, "I asked one of my smart summer interns to investigate what's the leading business case for ESG sustainability, et cetera, et cetera, and they came back and they said, 'Boss, there's good news and there's bad news. The good news is, if that is Project ROI, the bad news is that it's 10 years old.'"
Carol Cone:
Great.
Steve Rochlin:
So nine years old. And so a client said, "You got to update this. We need it and the field needs it." So that was all we needed to hear.
Carol Cone:
So I'd love to give credit if you'd like to share who your partners were in doing this research. Project ROI 2025.
Steve Rochlin:
Thank you for asking so much, We were so blessed to have incredibly engaged and supportive sponsors. MassMutual was our lead sponsor and was just incredible in terms of giving us open space to let the research go where it will go, and giving us also their guidance in terms of after 10 years, what's changed about the field? How does the practitioner view this? They were just amazing. Also, our contributing sponsors, Luma Sales, a big financial service firm, and also MODO Eyewear, the designer, eyeglass maker based in Europe, incredibly supportive as contributing to sponsors. And then we had an amazing team in terms of my co-authors, Richard Bliss, who's a tenured professor of finance, used to be a CFO himself. He's at Babson College, Cheryl Kiser, who was a long time head of the Institute for Social Innovation at Babson College. Chris Lloyd, who used to be a leader in terms of leading sustainability at a Fortune 50 company and also in part of my impact ROI team, and also Kristen Yngve, who's our amazing designer who was involved as well.
Steve Rochlin:
One of the things that the sponsors required both in 2015 and 2025 is that we make it free for download. So this is a gift that they're giving to the field.
Carol Cone:
Great. Let's talk about Project ROI 2025. So the two things we're going to do is I'd love you to talk about the key findings and you've broken them down in the report into financial, sales and revenue, responsible sourcing, risk and financing costs, and human resources, one of my favorite areas. So we're going to give you the numbers listeners, but there's a key caveat that Steve is going to say, he's already said it once. I'm going to say it many times. You have to do it well. So Steve, over to you about the key data points.
Steve Rochlin:
So let's start with financial performance because this is what is going to grab the attention of the CFO and the board the most. And so what we find is that companies that are actually leaders in doing sustainability and social impact ... I'm just going to say sustainability, but I mean environmental and social performance in governance included in all of that. When we look at that, companies that do it well can boost their overall market value by as much as 36%. They can boost their profitability by as much as 21% and they can boost their shareholder returns by as much as 6%. Now I want to explain the phrasing that I'm using. When you do sustainability well, it gives you an opportunity to achieve those types of ceilings. You can deliver that kind of result. But it's going to depend on the context. It's going to depend on how well you do it.
But if that's making sense, let's go on. Let's talk about something that the entire C-suite cares about as well as the board, and that's sales and revenue. What we found out and confirmed in 2015 is that the business to consumer, you can boost sales by as much as 20%. What we didn't know is whether that works for B2B, business to business. What we found now in 2025 is that there's a lot of evidence that suggests that it works the exact same way for B2B, and you can similarly boost sales B2B also by 20%. We also found that when you start thinking about integrating sustainability messages into advertising marketing and also embedding environmental and social features into your products and services, gives you an opportunity to grow as much as two to five times in terms of overall market share growth.
Steve Rochlin:
What is next? Let's stick with things that the CFO can love. This is a little bit arcane because there's always been a story that doing sustainability helps with intangible risk reduction, things like reducing reputation risks and PR risks and license to operate risks. Those are important, but they're a little bit vague and the CFO finds them ambiguous. What we found in our study is that actually environmental and social sustainability helps reduce financial and market risk and can reduce those risks by as much as 30%. We also have found that it can reduce financing costs, so it can reduce the cost of debt by 10%. That means you're going to get favorable lending terms. It also reduces the cost of equity, the ability to attract and retain and keep new investors by 14%. So that's very, very powerful.
One of the new areas that we investigated that we weren't able to investigate 10 years ago is responsible sourcing. So are you holding and keeping your supply chain to account for good environmental and social performance? What we found is, again, these B2B sales, which relate to responsible sourcing, you can boost those B2B sales by 20% as we discussed, but also we found that the stock market likes responsible sourcing. Particularly you can imagine this is a really key area of risk, certainly an area of reputation risk as well as regulatory risk, legal risk, and the market rewards companies that are good at managing their supply chain and responsible way, you can boost your share price by over 5%, and then you could also boost your profitability by 3%.
The last area that I'll talk about in terms of the numbers is human resources. The good news is that we found in 2015 that it could reduce employee turnover by 50%. Actually, the numbers got better. Really fascinating study that shows that it's now more like 57% reduced employee turnover. It can boost employee productivity by as much as 21%. And this is the only piece of bad news that I'm going to share. If you work for an employer that you think is really good at environmental and social performance, you are willing to take a pay cut. So we don't like that, but the CFO loves it, and you can take a pay cut of around 12% and still be happy. So those are the key numbers. There's actually more than that in the report, but those are some of the key numbers that executives seem to respond to well.
Carol Cone:
And that's great. That's a great synopsis. And I would just tell our listeners, it's page 13. It's one of my favorite pages in that report. So if you don't have enough time, go to page 13 and then you can put it into your own C-suite decks and other things to really show powerful results. I'd also just like to say that in human resources there's such a connection to risk reduction because if you are doing this well and the company has a crisis or such, and employees believe in you, they're going to come to your defense. And so again, doing this well, and we're going to get into that in a moment, can get you such significant outcomes. I don't want to ask if there's one or two of these data points that if you only had a sound bite to say to a CEO, which two or three would you use?
Steve Rochlin:
If we're going to go with the quantitative, I don't think you can go wrong with starting with the financial performance metrics and the sales metrics because most C-suite CEOs, CFOs, they go to bed thinking about those things and they wake up thinking about those things. So start with there. But actually I'll tell you the findings that interest me the most and that surprised me the most are qualitative findings that I'd love to share. And I think they're important to share with the C-suite as well. But what they find is that companies actually do use environmental and social sustainability as a strategic differentiating strategy to give them competitive advantage and to help them achieve superior financial performance. This is something that companies are using and this is mind-bending. The data is overwhelming that successfully good financially performing companies use this as a strategy and they use it in a variety of circumstances. When they're in a very competitive industry, they lean into this to differentiate. When they're going through a down business cycle, they lean into this to get out of that down business cycle. They use this in a variety of different ways, which is incredibly exciting.
Carol Cone:
Fascinating. So what you're saying here is that these results can help with the rational side of a believer. Can you change the mind of a non-believer?
Steve Rochlin:
I love this question. So Cheryl Kiser, one of my co-authors who you know well, she likes to say that what's going to be a better strategy for change to think your way into acting or to act your way into thinking? So she finds overwhelmingly that acting your way into thinking is a more powerful change strategy. So there's getting the hands dirty, there's doing it, there's seeing is believing, and suddenly your mindset changes. So that's very powerful. The second powerful research comes from another report that I've done with my co-author, Jeff Senne, who used to run the ESG and social impact function and DEI for PricewaterhouseCoopers. We did a report that we published with Trellis, and one of the things that we found is that leaders, but really everyone in the company tries to have an emotional relationship. They have an emotional relationship with environment. They don't understand, they haven't been taught. The new kids going through MBAs have been taught. But the current leaders were never taught on how all of this stuff fits in with conventional business management. So they relate to it in an emotional way, not a rational way.
And what we found is when we can start raising this, putting it out on the table and talking about them, when we start doing that, that helps the sustainability leader, the CSO and the head of the foundation, et cetera, be much more effective in communicating and being much more persuasive because they're talking the language that on a gut intuitive level, their leaders are going to relate to.
Carol Cone:
Love that. And then you get into fit, commit, manage and connect.
Steve Rochlin:
Fit, commit, manage, and connect. It's a nice rubric to remember what to do. Let's start with fit. Fit is really about ruthlessly focusing on material issues. The material for the business and stakeholders. And really emphasizing the business along with the stakeholders. What this says is, and what the research says is companies that really understand what these business and non-financial stakeholders understand, what they truly prioritize for their business, that is what they need to lean into. Those are the areas where companies say, "We need to lead on these. We need to be best in class, top quartile, top 10% in terms of our performance among our peers and competitors in those areas." That's what fit is about.
All right. So let's talk about commit. There's a few things to do to commit. The first thing is that we need to start building an integrated strategy. We need to actually have an idea of and put our stake in the ground that this is going to be part of business strategy, that our environmental and social performance, and we're going to actually have some targets in terms of how this is going to help the business. And we're going to be explicit and not apologize for having some absolutely well-defined value propositions for how environmental and social performance is supposed to help the business.
Steve Rochlin:
So we need to actually have an explicit strategy and say proudly, we are doing this in part to help us become financially more competitive. So that's part of what commit is. And then the other thing that commit talks about is the 80/20 rule.
One of the fascinating things in this field is that I've seen this again and again and again, and that is that companies develop a strategy, whether it's for social impacts or environmental sustainability, social sustainability, the whole ball of wax. And then what they do is they commit 20% of their sustainability budget to that and 80% is on what we might call hygiene or responding to those who are complaining or whatever it may be. And that's reversed. Strategy means that 80% of your resources should be going to the strategy if you believe in it. And so that's part of what commit says is orient your resources to the strategy you defined.
Carol Cone:
Brilliantly stated. Okay, manage.
Steve Rochlin:
Okay. So when we talk about manage, what we need to do is we need to treat this as a real discipline and manage it accordingly. Not manage it emotionally, but start to engage our rational analytic brains on this. But there's an emotional component to this that we shouldn't ignore. And the key thing here is that we need to pay attention to the organizational culture. One of the things that they focus on the culture of their employees, they will do that, but they won't focus on the culture that their C-suite is trying to create.
Carol Cone:
So really key point listeners. The KPIs need to be mostly focused on the business and the growth of the business. And it shows your C-suite how you are thinking about the business growth and it allows you greater integration with the work that you're doing. Brilliant. So now let's get to connect.
Steve Rochlin:
The connect is what we were talking about before, and there's a few things. There's always the argument in this space, should we promote what we do? And right now is a real fraught time so we can talk about the political dynamics of it. But the bottom line is that absolutely, if you are not talking and building awareness about what you're doing for environmental and social factors, what's the point? You are going to reduce substantially your ability to support the business. And that means if you're not supporting the business, you're not going to get the resources that you need to truly make impact. So yes, you need to build awareness with key stakeholders.
So that's number one. Number two, we need to bring back some of the OG elements of sustainability management. "You need to understand and engage and listen to your stakeholders," just like we were talking about a second ago. And the research bears out that that is incredibly important that companies that are seen doing that, listening engaged, that stakeholders believe, understand their expectations, that is a huge driver of the dynamics that lead to superior financial performance from sustainability. So that's what connect is about.
Carol Cone:
Super. Okay, so fit, commit, manage, and connect. Companies that do that well thoughtfully, strategically have the opportunity to deliver these incredible powerfully growing financial sales, responsible sourcing risk and financing costs and human resources results.
Steve Rochlin:
That's what we found.
Carol Cone:
That's amazing. That's amazing. So we've got listeners, they're all excited, they've all downloaded the report, what do they do? And they don't have the beautiful HPE company or they're not working in Patagonia or Interface that gets this totally. They're in the middle of the market, may be doing some but siloed. They don't have the resources. What should they do next?
Steve Rochlin:
Well, I'm contractually obligated to say that it would be really smart for them to call Impact ROI, but they can also call Carol Cone ON PURPOSE. That would be really smart too.
Carol Cone:
Thank you. We'll do it together.
Steve Rochlin:
I love it. They have the report. Structure the report in a simple three-part process. Number one, build a persuasive story about the business case that sustainability, whether on the environment, the social or governance or all three. The persuasive story about the business case sustainability and social impact can deliver for a company. All right. However you need to frame it, use the data and information to create that story so that you get the attention of your bosses. That's number one. Number two, when you have their attention, use this opportunity to update or refresh whatever strategy you have for sustainability, social impact, et cetera, and say, "In order to deliver this and get this kind of result, we need a better integrated aligned strategy with our business. So use that process to update it, refresh it, whatever you have to do." The third thing is to combine piloting this and measuring it.
And this includes a few things. In the strategy start doing what other parts of the business do and that is take that strategy and create a financial projection forecast and say, "If we adopt this strategy, these are the financial returns on investment we forecast, we will generate from this." And it's possible to do it. We do this with companies all the time. But we're doing like three or four right now. So whether it's a three-year forecast, 18 months is a little aggressive, you might be able to do that. Three years is probably going to be on the nose, do that forecast and say, "This is our target." And then start rolling that strategy out and then pilot a few key activities that you can start to measure the business impact as well as the impact for people and planet. So it's those three things. Tell that story, update your strategy, pilot and measure.
Carol Cone:
Perfect. I always like to give you the last word. What else would you like to add before we have to unfortunately say goodbye, but we'll have you back for sure.
Steve Rochlin:
I love this conversation. Thank you so much, Carol. Again, being able to have this conversation on one of the people I admire most in the field is just a thrill for me. So thank you. You've been a great friend. Here's what I would say. You and I have had to deal with and debate a very powerful and simple way of telling the story about why sustainability is bad for the bottom line. And basically that is the business of business of business, Milton Friedman, and that doesn't include this stuff. And this stuff is just taxation regulation or communism by another name. And that's this simple story we've had to fight for the years we've been in this field. One of the things that this Project ROI 2025 has done is come up with an equally simple story that I think counteracts that. And it starts with this. Who would you rather do business with? A company you trust or a company you don't? I'd rather invest in work for or buy from or get into a contractual relationship with a company I trust.
All right. How do you figure out whether or not a company is trustworthy? It's not from advertising. We cite a study that shows something like only 35, 36% of consumers trust advertising. People don't trust advertising. The government used to play a role in terms of certifying in a way companies, but governments around the world have abandoned that a long time. They can't tell you who to trust. What determines a shortcut for determining whether or not I can trust a company is what they do on environmental and social performance. That's what this stuff is doing, and that's why it's such a powerful strategy to create competitive and financial advantage.
Carol Cone:
Fabulous. Oh, that's perfect. That's great. You've got all the depth, but you've got the simplicity of the message. Steve, thank you for joining us and for continuing to lead the way and demonstrating that purpose and performance are not at odds, but they're inextricably linked. For our listeners, you can find Project ROI 2025 at impactroi.com. It's a must read for any leader, for any mid-level professional, emerging professional who wants to prove and improve the value of, don't get stuck in the words purpose, ESG, CR, getting involved with society and the environment. So until next time, I'm Carol Cone reminding you that purpose is not a program, it's a way of being and doing business. Have a great day.
This podcast was brought to you by some amazing people, and I'd love to thank them. Anne Hundertmark and Kristin Kenny at Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, Pete Wright and Andy Nelson, our crack production team at TruStory FM. And you, our listener. Please rate and rank us because we really want to be as high as possible as one of the top business available so that we can continue exploring together the importance and the activation of authentic purpose. Thanks so much for listening.
This transcript was exported on Oct 27, 2025 - view latest version here.
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