How can you embed sustainability in a way that motivates employees? It’s a challenge for many leaders faced with the question of how to maintain the momentum of their sustainability strategy, especially in a recession.

The case for using sustainability to motivate employees is compelling. There’s a strong correlation between activities which come under the umbrella of corporate responsibility and employee satisfaction and engagement, according to the latest Sunday Times Best Companies survey.

And research from the Hay Group shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30 per cent and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.  

Many of our business partners have experienced this for themselves, and discovered that sustainability can be a powerful way of motivating and engaging employees by bringing new meaning to their work in a way that aligns with their personal values.  This becomes even more important during the recession, when employees need to be as productive as possible, precisely at a time when many are feeling vulnerable and insecure in their jobs.

A good example of this is property company Gentoo, which launched ‘Gentoo Green’, an internal programme to engage employees in its sustainability vision and strategy.  The programme was backed by the CEO and was supported by internal communications, champions, training, and opportunities for employees to get involved.  This led to over 700 suggestions from employees about how to improve Gentoo’s sustainability performance, and it’s been estimated that the programme has already delivered half a million pounds in savings to the group in its first year.

Despite this strong business case, many organisations seem to struggle with how to engage employees with sustainability, perhaps not knowing where and how they should start.  

I want to offer an approach that brings a sustainability strategy alive and delivers real results by integrating it into existing business processes.  It has four components, based on what successful leaders have done in practice, and each reinforces and complements the others..


Direction: communicating why and how
Use existing communications methods such as the Intranet to convey a sense of direction:

why are you doing it? – provide a compelling sense of purpose and ambition; for example, through a vision.
how are you going to do it? – give employees clarity and confidence that the strategy and goals will achieve the vision or ambition.


Capability: what people need to know and be able to do
Identify and prioritise the skills and knowledge that your key staff groups will require to deliver the strategy:

·    leaders – need to own, drive and deliver the strategy
·    project teams – need to deliver specific parts of the strategy
·    all employees – the wider organisation not directly involved in specific projects needs a basic understanding of the strategy.

This could be delivered in a variety of ways ranging from e-learning packages and courses through to the sharing of best practice through networks.

Performance: individuals making sense of the strategy
Employees need to know what the strategy means for them and their role. The following ‘people processes’ in particular can help to achieve this:

·    performance objectives which identify what it means for individuals
·    feedback and recognition for improved performance
·    rewards which support sustainability performance improvements

For example at our partner John Laing, every single member of staff has to have at least one personal objective based on sustainability.


Involvement: owning and adapting the strategy
Creating advocates, or champions, are a powerful way of coordinating activities and motivating peers. Team meetings, Employee Forums and away days can also be used to discuss the strategy and explore what individuals and teams can do to deliver it.

In each of the four components, reviewing progress allows leaders to adapt the implementation of the strategy by building on what works and changing what doesn’t.  This balances a top-down approach that sets the direction and parameters through the strategy, with a bottom-up approach that responds to employee suggestions and enthusiasm and allows flexibility to account for the departmental or regional context.  

For more suggestions and examples of how to engage employees see  page 2 

For more information contact Ben Kellard