Need to know:
- Employers need a strategic and holistic approach when addressing sustainability; this should align with organisational values and corporate social responsibility.
- Intrinsic rewards can often be more motivational than extrinsic, as part of a recognition programme based around sustainability.
- Employees’ personal values and objectives should feed into the organisation’s overall approach to sustainability.
Sustainability concerns, such as climate change, energy production and water scarcity, are becoming more visible and time sensitive, for both individuals and businesses. Employees are increasingly seeking to enforce change in support of sustainability, and are looking to their employers to help them action these ambitions.
Research by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), published in December 2018, found that 66% of employees would support a bonus incentive scheme to help cut carbon emissions, while 57% feel that their employer is not doing enough to involve them in reducing the business' carbon footprint. Less than half (46%) of organisations are inviting staff to put forward their own sustainable ideas.
How can benefits and reward help address a sustainability agenda that is becoming increasingly important to employees, and how will this impact engagement and motivation?
Boosting engagement
Statistics published by Double the Donation, updated in 2018, show that engagement increases to 60% when staff work for socially responsible organisations. This is compared to a global average of less than 20%, according to Professor Vlatka Hlupic, professor of business and management at the University of Westminster.
She says: “The key point is that [organisations] do well by doing good. Doing good means taking care of the environment, taking care of the wider society, contributing to society, taking care of employees. Then, employees will take care of customers. It’s a win-win circle.”
Increased staff motivation and retention can also result from efforts to address sustainability, particularly if they align with employees’ personal values. Organisations can also reap benefits in terms of reputation and branding, as well as generate cost savings by reducing energy expenditure.
Megan Nollman, library services assistant and sustainability consultant at Schlow Centre Region Library, adds: “There are definitely tangible, financial reasons to commit to sustainability, and the more holistic that commitment is, the more effective it will be.”
A strategic approach
Addressing sustainability in the workplace has generally transitioned from being a one-off, tick-box activity to instead becoming the focus of a longer-term strategic approach, often linked to wellbeing initiatives, notes Graham Simmonds, managing director at Green Rewards.
A strategic approach should encourage and embed simple behaviour changes, as part of a dedicated programme that employees can fit easily into their working day. This can cumulatively create a larger, longer-term impact.
“If everyone in [the] office is using the stairs over the lift, over a few months, that could have quite a significant impact in terms of [employees’] health, and also the energy saved,” Simmonds explains.
Goals and targets
Employers can base their approach around environmental goals; traditionally, this will centre around carbon reduction, energy saving and recycling, alongside employee wellbeing. “A target might be to cut energy use by 5%, to remove single use plastics from the workplace, a 5% drop in staff travel with an increase in video conferencing,” Simmonds explains.
Organisations can also use the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) as a framework for positive behaviour changes. There are 17 global SDGs in total, including those related to climate action and responsible production and consumption.
Simmonds says: “Start at that top level, which is usually around pro-environmental things to do with energy, carbon and resources and wellbeing, and then work down and say what are the specific behaviour modules that we want to focus on? How can individuals follow these positive actions?”
Key components of a strategic approach include ongoing communications, relevant rewards and gamification, while the use of an online platform can provide easy access and help track progress.
Incorporating reward
Areward and recognition programme which focuses on creating intrinsic rewards, such as the feeling of satisfaction at having been part of something meaningful, can help to embed positive behaviours into day-to-day life.
Yves Duhaldeborde, senior director, employee insights team at Willis Towers Watson, says: “It’s thinking of total rewards rather than just pay or bonuses. It can be woven in, linking what behaviours [employers] want to see employees display with non-tangible benefits.”
For Simmonds, however, more concrete motivators, such as vouchers and charity donations have an important place. To this end, a system of points, used as in-house currency to perhaps purchase food and drinks on-site, can help gamify engagement. Additional details, such as providing discounts at on-site cafes if employees use their own reusable cups, can further integrate and reward sustainable actions.
Rewards closely linked to employers’ wellbeing strategies might include gym vouchers or free personal training sessions.
Cycle-to-work schemes that reward active commuting can also be helpful, although employers should be mindful of the need for shower and changing facilities, lockers and secure bike parking if they want to encourage take-up, adds Eric Craig, chief executive officer at free2cycle.
Culture change
To change day-to-day behaviours, a sustainability strategy must be underpinned by fundamental corporate values.
Wendy Melville, head of marketing at Personal Group, says: “If [an employer’s] values are around sustainability, they can use their reward structure to reinforce them and to push them forward to embed them into the organisation. It becomes a perfect storm.”
Nollman agrees: “When the employer shows a demonstrated commitment to sustainability through their mission and their values and the way that they structure the organisation itself, that creates more buy-in, more authenticity, so that employees understand that it’s related to their work.”
A commitment to sustainability can also be incorporated into key corporate structures, such as performance management. This might include asking employees how they have used volunteering hours, or if they have participated in activities around sustainability.
Implementing these kinds of fundamental, cultural changes necessitates management buy-in, without which employee engagement will likely prove elusive. "It wouldn’t work if [employers] had great technology and it was never emphasised or supported by leaders. [It has to be] very much aligned with the way managers and leaders behave and talk,” says Duhaldeborde.
Employee input
Once top-level engagement has been achieved, employees should be involved in planning their organisation's approach to sustainability.
One method is to ask for volunteers to become ambassadors, who then initiate conversations and identify areas for improvement. “Give employees a chance to really feel involved in these efforts, be very active and listen to them. That’s very, very motivating,” Duhaldeborde says.
Nollman adds: “There has to be work done in advance to really know employees and know their values, so that [employers] can talk to them about what things are important to them and then find ways to connect that to sustainability.”
If staff are able to help choose which charities or community projects to support, this can help to demonstrate authenticity and increase engagement, especially if employee committees are used to manage and run projects.
Employers should also ensure that trips or activities relating to wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) and sustainability are funded by the business, and that time is provided during working hours to participate in organised activities.
For example, Personal Group sends between five and 10 employees to Kenya approximately twice a year to do volunteer work. “We don’t expect [employees] to use their holiday allowance to do that,” Melville says. “We don’t expect them to fund it.”
Sustainable investing
Sustainability can also be addressed through an organisation’s pension plan, by offering ESG funds within the investment portfolio. These funds, which are different from ethical funds, consider the environmental, social and governance impacts of investment prospects.
Alistair Byrne, head of Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) pensions and retirement strategy at State Street Global Advisors (SSGA), says: “Employees appreciate the idea of responsible investment; they are keen to know that the money they are saving each month is being invested on a sustainable basis. If [employers] talk to them about portfolios that are focusing more on green energy, that are focusing on [organisations] that have good standards of practice in their supply chain, rather than ones that take shortcuts, [businesses] that have good governance, good levels of diversity, that’s a very positive message. We see it as a good step to employee engagement with retirement savings.”
To action this, Byrne recommends that employers set an ESG fund as their pension scheme’s default for auto-enrolment purposes. “It’s about trying to find a broad set of ESG and sustainability principles that most people can buy into,” he adds.
Storytelling and communications
Leveraging technology to segment communications is a useful way to make sustainability relevant for a diverse set of workforce demographics. A short quiz featured in the sustainability section of a staff intranet, for example, can direct employees to initiatives they would be personally interested in.
Furthermore, and particularly when it comes to educating employees on more complex subjects such as ESG pension funds, Byrne recommends sharing positive case studies that give examples and discuss the principles. "The thing that really brings it to life is to be able to talk about the [organisations] that are invested in and the reasons why certain [businesses] were emphasised because of what they are doing for the environment. That’s the thing [employers] can really engage people with,” he says.
Measuring success
Quantitative data, such as energy usage, is easy to track via a platform, and can help pinpoint changes in different sustainable behaviours.
Meanwhile, employers can observe the effects on engagement through staff surveys, noting whether employees volunteer to be sustainability champions, looking at turnover rates, or measuring whether staff are willing to recommend the organisation to others. Exit interviews, net promoter scores and reviews on job websites such as Glassdoor can be helpful sources of information in these areas.
Sustainable practices in the workplace, encouraged and supported by reward mechanisms, are swiftly gaining traction among employers from a range of industry sectors, whether they decide to focus on recycling, energy usage or active travel, to name a few.
By linking sustainability objectives to benefits and reward, employers can influence positive behaviour change, with the knock-on advantages of boosting engagement, motivation, and buy-in to the business’ agenda and goals.
Craig concludes: “We live in a society where we need to encourage a certain amount of responsibility from the individual, but the organisation should act as the enabler or catalyst for change.”
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