Effective employee sustainability engagement survey

Employee sustainability engagement is highly important to those leading sustainability within organisations, according to the survey carried out by OckiPro and the Institute of Corporate Responsibility and Sustainability.  But the level of importance is not perceived to be matched by senior leadership or HR teams, who are critical in the work to empower employees to deliver organisations’ sustainability commitments and targets.

The Effective Employee Sustainability Engagement Survey assesses current practices. It combines responses from over 100 professionals with OckiPro’s expertise to provide recommendations to make workforce engagement more powerful.

Recommendations

Organisations struggling to make headway implementing sustainability should consider:

• working with senior leadership and HR teams so they better understand the importance of employee sustainability engagement in delivering organisational commitments;
• conducting dedicated employee sustainability engagement surveys to identify needs, track progress, and ensure employees are benefitting from sustainability engagement;
• setting up sustainability ambassador or champion schemes, if they do not exist;
• integrating sustainability training into overall training (eg leadership), and making stand alone sustainability training mandatory (but not a tick-box exercise);
• prioritising HR and finance departments if they are not engaged and checking diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) engagement addresses staff needs? If a materiality assessment is available, how does it align to employee interests – do awareness raising for high-impact topics.

 Survey highlights

The survey indicates 85% of sustainability professionals think employee engagement is critical (63%) or fairly essential (22%) to delivering sustainability commitments and targets. However, they perceive 67% of senior management and 56% of HR teams take this view (and those with a critical view drop to 36% and 15%, respectively).

There is a mixed picture in terms of how well sustainability is embedded across workforces. Around 39% of respondents agree or strongly agree that their colleagues are empowered to act; nearly 30% are neutral on the question; and 32% disagree or strongly disagree.

While 70% of respondents have done some assessment of how important sustainability is to employees, only 15% have conducted dedicated sustainability surveys. To understand what employees know, want to know, think of existing activities, and would like to see, OckiPro recommends that organisations consider conducting dedicated sustainability surveys. By carrying out these surveys regularly, organisations can also track progress.

Those that do carry out assessments generally agree or strongly agree that: 

• sustainability is important to their employees; 

• that their colleagues are engaged in, and empowered to act on, sustainability; and 

• workers know their role in delivering organisational commitments. 

However, there is a big discrepancy between the level of importance, and action taken – indicating that further progress is needed in this area.

Methods used and functions prioritised

Of the methods used to engage employees, information channels, like intranets and newsletters, are the most used, but it is one of the least effective. The use of sustainability ambassadors is one of the most effective activities, along with the integration of sustainability into general training, for example in leadership. But the latter is one of the least used methods.

Many sustainability professionals have had to prioritise the functions with which they engage. Two of the most influential, the board and procurement, rank top in the survey. With a critical role to play in development and training, and writing sustainability into job descriptions and performance and development targets, it is surprising that HR ranks fifth. Similarly, finance, which is critical to obtaining a budget, comes in ninth place. 

What employees find important

Climate is the second most important topic for employees. They are more concerned with diversity, equity and inclusion (although it is a close call). With that in mind, sustainability professionals may need to consider their engagement on these ‘people’ issues, working closely with HR. Areas where sustainability leads may need to do more awareness raising include biodiversity, water use and circularity – depending on the organisation’s operations.  

While leadership, communications and empowering others are rated top skills for employees to act sustainably, three skills that are vital to transformative change – making the business case, change management and problem solving – need attention. Personal resilience is ranked the least important skill, but sustainability and HR leads should be aware that many people struggle with anxiety around sustainability issues. Insufficient action can impact wellbeing.

Key challenges

Lack of time and resources are well known challenges when it comes to employee sustainability engagement, and this is reflected in the survey. The fact that it is often not mandatory within an organisation is raised by a third of respondents, as a challenge. Senior leadership teams should consider enforcing certain sustainability actions, for example training, and assess whether this is effective (avoiding tick-box exercises).

Measuring progress is seen as one of the most difficult areas by survey respondents, with two thirds struggling to do it. Because of the difficulties respondents report in linking engagement to impact, the data on where the biggest impacts are is difficult to interpret. 

The survey, which was conducted through March 2024, received 113 responses.

The full survey results, charts and demographic information can be downloaded here.