- engaging the entire workforce in their sustainability efforts
In short, companies need to create a culture of sustainability to remain relevant. Employee engagement offers the path of least resistance here, and the good news is that the organization probably already has experience with it!
In this context, I define employee engagement as measures to increase employee participation in a company's environmental and sustainability efforts.
It's about proactively and purposefully creating opportunities to inform, inspire, and activate all employees (more on that below) to make sustainability an integral part of everyone's work.
This doesn't mean an organization knows exactly how each employee can make an individual contribution. It means creating the right conditions and incentives to foster the creativity and willingness to experiment that is required for everyone to figure it out. The organizational structure that companies have historically used to implement sustainability is simply inadequate for the scale, speed, and complexity of the climate crisis. We need to rethink who is allowed to work on sustainability and invite everyone to contribute. Experience shows us that you don't need a sustainability title to come up with the next great idea! Every employee in every position will need to figure out how they can help accelerate this transformation. It's about democratizing sustainability, based on the idea that everyone has something meaningful to contribute.
Planetary-scale problems require planetary-scale solutions
Even with growing influence and resources, professional sustainability teams often remain small, isolated, and chronically under-resourced. These factors can limit their ability to implement the far-reaching changes required to embed sustainability within a company. As with most issues of the climate crisis, this is a problem of scale. From reducing global CO2 emissions to creating a circular economy, these problems are literally planetary in scale. The solutions must match this scale. Getting there requires far-reaching collaboration across the entire company.
When we consider that sustainability experts aren't hired to develop more sustainable ways of working for existing positions, a new way of thinking emerges: What happens if every employee contributes to sustainable transformation within their existing responsibilities? What would it look like to examine the intersection of sustainability with every existing role in the company? For example, who could better define the principles of green software development than software developers? Who could better establish the principles of sustainable design than designers?
Perhaps you've heard the rallying cry: Now every job is a climate job.
This is the future of sustainability work. By engaging all employees to amplify the efforts of existing sustainability teams, every company can meet these challenges and create a culture of sustainability along the way.
The Employee Engagement Success Cycle. How exactly can a company successfully engage its employees in sustainability?
There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question, but I learned a great deal during my seven years at Microsoft, widely regarded as a leading company in sustainability: and based on that, I developed what I call the "Employee Engagement Success Cycle."
This cycle takes on kinetic energy and becomes self-sustaining over time. Like a snowball rolling down a hill and turning into an avalanche, it gains momentum and pulls everything in its path along with it. Individual employees can enter the cycle at any point depending on their experience, but it is crucial that they go through all three phases. After that, they know what sustainability is (and isn't), how to integrate it into their work, and how to help others do the same.
Education
Education is the best starting point because understanding sustainability is a fundamental prerequisite for everything that follows. With such a vast and complex topic, companies must first establish a common language internally. Every employee should understand what sustainability is, why it matters, and how the company is addressing the topic. Armed with this knowledge, employees are much better equipped to figure out how they can contribute themselves. Otherwise, they may not understand how their individual actions align with those of the company, which can lead to wasted effort and frustration on both sides.
Here are some quick tips on how to create a workforce with high sustainability literacy:
- Offer sustainability training. As with any form of knowledge expected of employees, training is essential. And don't worry: if a company doesn't have the resources to conduct sustainability training itself, there are plenty of other companies that specialize in exactly this area.
- Frequent and honest communication is crucial. Inform employees regularly and transparently about the company's sustainability goals and progress through all existing business rhythms. Normalize and socialize the topic of sustainability in town halls, newsletters, and any other mechanisms already used to communicate with the workforce.
- Open two-way communication channels between leadership and employees. Remember that successful communication involves just as much listening as speaking. We all still have a lot to learn!
Inspiration
Once the training is complete, it's time to inspire employees by showing them what's possible! This is especially important because everyone needs to understand how to move from abstract concepts and data to practical implementation.
Here are some best practices for motivating employees:
- Highlight success stories and, whenever possible, share how they came about. Especially when it involves the work of employees.
- Distribute Project Drawdown's Job Function Action Guides throughout your company. These practical and shareable resources highlight specific, high-impact climate actions that employees in common positions can implement (Finance, Government and Public Policy, Human Resources and Operations, Legal, Marketing, Procurement, Sales, and Customer-Facing Functions).
- Ask your employees for their ideas on what the company can do to become more sustainable. Collect the suggestions and offer rewards for the ideas with the greatest feasibility! Many employees have great ideas — they're just waiting to be asked!
Activation
Now the really cool stuff can happen! With the foundational knowledge and belief in what's possible, employees can figure out for themselves how to integrate sustainability into their work. Leaders, in turn, should provide the resources and conditions that enable experiments to succeed.
Here are some tips for activating employees:
- Create or support an employee community for sustainability! This is one of the most cost-effective ways to activate employees at scale. Learn more in my blog post How to Build Your Own Employee Sustainability Community
- Set incentives and reward meaningful work with meaningful recognition! Avoid the typical promotional giveaways and get creative. Consider professional development scholarships, discounts on sustainability courses, emissions reduction credits, paid time off for volunteer work, or donations to environmental nonprofits, or mention employees in the company's external sustainability reports.
- Provide real resources for all of this, meaning a budget, staff, and top-down support from company leadership. Start by championing employee engagement through the company's Chief Sustainability Officer or a comparable person. If possible, make it part of the sustainability strategy.
When the workforce is included in the employee engagement cycle, it provides a lasting way to engage employees and create a culture of sustainability.
Glacier's Tip:
Climate Action Day
Climate Action Day (CAD) is the annual climate action day on which companies and their employees engage with sustainability, implement concrete measures, and thereby strengthen awareness of climate protection.
In summary...
Companies that have recognized the importance of involving all their employees in sustainability will succeed in a world shaped by climate change.
By democratizing sustainability work across all roles and functions, companies can attract and retain top talent, drive innovation, and develop a workforce with high sustainability literacy. In short, employee engagement for sustainability is about gaining more helping hands for a problem that is bigger than any one of us or our companies. It's about delivering on the promise that employees are a company's most valuable asset by including them in the work of our lifetimes.
About the Author
Drew Wilkinson
Drew Wilkinson is a climate activist, community organizer, and co-founder of Microsoft's 10,000-member sustainability community. His mission is to make sustainability a part of everyone's job. He works for Planet Earth, but also offers employee engagement consulting services through his company Climate Leadership Collective. Learn more on his website.
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