I had that presentation in front of a large marketing network within our company. “Jacky, show us what you are doing at Group Sustainbility and how we might integrate the topic in daily work life.” Alright. Went great! Constructive discussions, interesting questions, and positive feedback.
And then, there was Harry (name changed).
Five minutes after my presentation, Teams rang. Harry wanted to give me some feedback. Appreciated. But then, Harry just held a minutes-long monologue on how sustainability departments just want to force veganism, how he hates Greta Thunberg (without me even having mentioned her) and how he is already shifting his private mobility towards public transport.
It was no feedback. It was a whole damn rant.
Even if Angry Harry was far from constructive, I thought a lot about him. And I remain with the question how people can become so furious about sustainable ambitions (I swear, never did I recommend any private behaviour in that session as I know this can backfire… breathe Harry, we do not take your SUV away from you. We have better things to do). However, I could take away something very valuable out of Harry’s ‘I-want-my-steak’-speech.
While Angry Harry was clearly biased by selective perception of his triggers within my presentation — he feels asked to change his beloved habits — he was not able to see that we are far from being only responsible for transforming the canteen, reducing paper usage and thinking about how he commutes. The personal-level measures. The nitty-gritty stuff.
My self-critical voice asked: How can I stronger underpin our real action lever — our big measures — while also showing the small things? To prevent selective perception, maybe I should not simply show separate project slides but create a classifying overview . This should represent a synergy of both — the always overseen huge-impact projects and the employee-level impact projects — in an easily understandable manner. For that purpose, I came up with the VISIBILITY & EMPLOYEE AWARENESS / ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT matrix:
This matrix leaves aside the running operations resp. obligations like yearly ratings and reporting. It focuses on project level. Sustainability projects should always concern at least one out of two dimensions:
a) Direct Environmental Impact, f.e. how much CO2-equivalent emissions does the project aim to reduce, how does it contribute to biodiversity etc.
b) Indirect Environmental Impact, coined Visibility / Employee Awareness. Or: The nitti-gritty stuff.
I think, both types of projects need to coexist. More than that: they should go hand in hand and facilitate each other.
…
How Employee Awareness Facilitates Large-Scale Actions
My department sees itself as a thinktank and consultants to our board and business units. We are responsible for transforming the business model and pushing towards a green future. Along with working on various sustainability ratings and some reporting topics. On top of that, we do some — well, yes, nitty-gritty stuff like introducing sustainable coffee and a vegan-only line in the canteen. Which I find important as well.
Could you ever imagine a company that truly works on creating a green business model and at the same time mindlessly sourcing fossil energy to power its buildings or having no vegan options in the canteen? Appears like a contradiction. Arousing interest for sustainability in daily business life is a prerequisite for anchoring the topic in the corporate DNA.
However, a company only doing the ‘nitty-gritty stuff’ while maintaining an unsustainable business model should be under suspicion for greenwashing its employer brand. This is promoting a green attitude while not carrying out impactful business action.
We Shape The Environment, Our (Business) Environment Shapes Us
So employee awareness measures need to go together with real transformation. And of course, the latter is a bigger effort. And a bigger effects. This is why sustainability departments should first and foremost focus on real business transformation: Tell your boards about new ways to carry out your operations, make decarbonization plans, source green energy, make emissions count for M&A transactions. Do the real stuff. At the same time, sensitize your employees for sustainable behaviour in a cool way. Never underestimate the impact of designing daily business life and the work environment at your company.
To communicate what your sustainability department is (hopefully) actually doing, respresenting your projects within the VISIBILITY & EMPLOYEE AWARENESS / ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT matrix can be a good starting point. The punchline is: We focus on a green transformation. For that, the nitty-gritty stuff is our side hustle. To drive real change, we need a freaking orchester of both types of projects. And we need to talk about it in an understandble manner.
Thank you, Harry for making me think.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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Photo credit: Unsplash / Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦
