Business is a powerful engine for innovation and is uniquely placed to deliver change at scale. Leaders have a responsibility to empower their teams, unlock innovation, and create a culture where change can happen.
Sustainability is a core strategy that can drive long-term success by engaging and motivating employees. A study by CultureAmp found that if employees have a positive perception of their organization's commitment to sustainability, engagement increases by 16%. Yet only 31% of employees (Gartner) believe their organization provides adequate training to support sustainability goals, highlighting a gap between engagement and sustainability. This is despite 67% of employees rating sustainability-related issues as highly important (Gartner).
Paul Polman, former Unilever CEO, brought our attention to the rise of “conscious quitting”, where staff walk if corporate values do not align with their own. Educating employees around sustainability initiatives and taking them along on the journey is crucial. Regardless of their role, it’s important that each individual feels empowered to contribute to sustainable progress. When employees understand and are involved in sustainability initiatives, they feel a greater sense of purpose and connection to their work.
With so many employees wanting to work for organizations that are seen to give a damn, how can businesses dial up their ambition as corporate stewards and ensure sustainability is embedded into everyone’s role?
Building awareness around your sustainability strategy
People are a key component to embed sustainability in your corporate DNA. Training and education around your company’s sustainability strategy is key to encourage involvement among employees.
Involving staff in co-defining sustainability goals, as well as how to meet them, is critical so that individuals know how they can contribute. When we worked with AstraZeneca to embed their sustainability strategy throughout the organization, one of the first challenges we addressed was to ensure employees understood what sustainability goals the company had set. Using our real-time online crowdsourcing platform, VYTALS, we gained valuable insights into how the strategy was perceived and where improvements could be made to inform the messages we distributed.
of employees rate sustainability-related issues 'highly important'.
of employees believe their organization provides adequate training to support sustainability goals.
People are a key component to embed sustainability in your corporate DNA. Training and education around your company’s sustainability strategy is key to encourage involvement among employees.
We launched an internal campaign to educate employees on the broader scope of their strategy and how it aligned with the company’s mission to deliver life-changing medicines. This included interviews with senior leaders discussing its importance and case study examples of the strategy in action. Employees began to see how their work contributed to a greater good, which significantly boosted engagement and drove pride to be part of an organization that was making a positive impact.
Enabling change-makers
Your organization is full of smart people with different skills. Though businesses usually have a small handful of people who devote their time to sustainability, we want to challenge organizations to connect everyone’s unique skills to solving sustainability challenges.
Is sustainability hardwired in your culture so that people can connect your mission to their role and contribute?
Understanding what people think about your sustainability strategy can help you uncover where to focus and motivate your people. Employees need to see how they can contribute to your company’s sustainability goals in tangible ways.
Is sustainability hardwired in your culture so that people can connect your mission to their role and contribute?
At AstraZeneca, we initiated realistic actions to show how individuals could contribute in their day-to-day tasks. These included personal stories of the positive actions staff were taking, linked directly to AstraZeneca’s strategic pillars so employees could see how they created impact.
Making positive changes doesn’t need to involve anything drastic. As Anne Marie Bonneau, The Zero-Waste Chef, once said, "We don't need a handful of people doing sustainability perfectly, we need millions of people doing it imperfectly". This is a good philosophy to apply to employee action – making change doesn't need to be a drastic overhaul and small actions can create ripples that drive big impact. The more your people are aware of sustainability challenges and involved in initiatives, the more they will have the agency to identify solutions and drive innovation.
Enabling change for the long-term
Creating a culture where everyone in your organization understands how they can drive sustainability doesn't happen overnight. Leaders need to be committed to the long-term journey.
Raising awareness, driving action, and building belief in why sustainability matters will help contribute to a more positive future and create a resilient, responsible business.
There is a difference between leading sustainability targets and strategies, and enabling a culture of sustainability. We find a valuable first step is to take the time to uncover what your people think about your sustainability initiatives, and more importantly, whether they understand how it connects to their role or whether they believe they can contribute. These insights are invaluable in understanding where to focus your efforts on education and engagement.
If you’d like to quickly get to the heart of business challenges, visit VYTALS here. Or to find out more about our recommendations for shaping a culture of change makers, grab our sustainable leadership playbook, Levers for Change, here.
