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Making the business case for sustainability engagement

The people who work for organisations are going to be critical to the success of sustainability strategies. Ocki launches a concise playbook, and develops a new membership service, to support sustainability professionals and champions as they engage their colleagues to deliver on commitments and legal obligations. 

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Sustainability professionals know employee engagement is a must have, but struggle to make the business case. Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.

Sustainability managers understand the business case for sustainability, but they are yet to make a successful business case for sustainability engagement, according to discussions at a series of roundtables organised by Ocki earlier this year. Roundtable participants said they know ‘people’ are a critical part of successful implementation, but they need to find a way to show that spending on engagement and training boosts sustainability delivery, which in turn boosts revenues and saves costs.

 

As a result, it appears that many organisations struggle to fully consider employee engagement when developing and implementing their sustainability strategies and initiatives, and as a result, those strategies fail to achieve their aims. 

 

The roundtables were organised to further explore market research Ocki conducted last year. This research indicated most organisations want sustainability to be part of every employee’s role, but they find it difficult to achieve this.

 

The roundtable discussions are captured in a 38-page ‘playbook’ which sets out best practice in engaging employees in sustainability. A concise version of the playbook is available to download for free by registering using the button at the end of this article.

Sustainability engagement cycle

To establish a process for engagement, roundtable participants identified a five-stage engagement cycle as a framework for a more systematic and defined approach to raising awareness and involving employees in sustainability.  

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Taking a more systematic approach to employee engagement in sustainability. Graphic by Harrison Tanner and Lucy Duckham.

The playbook aims to help organisations of all types and sizes to build a more detailed and robust engagement plan.

 

“The roundtable discussions were extremely fruitful, and I would like to thank all of the participants,” said Ocki’s founder Emma Chynoweth. “In addition to spelling out a systematic approach to employee engagement in sustainability, the people taking part talked about the insights, tools and networking they would value to help them succeed. To address these needs, Ocki is very excited to announce that it is now developing a membership service.”

New membership service

Based on the roundtable discussions and follow up research that highlighted the key challenges faced by sustainability leads and champions, the Ocki’s service will include:

  • A diagnostic prototype, employee engagement survey, and planning tools to help plan and measure progress in engagement strategies;
  • Insights to help in ‘Making key allies…’ and ‘Making the business case’, as part of preparing for engagement;
  • A series of ‘Getting the skills…’ insights and ‘Action’ recommendations aimed at different departments and functions, as part of acting; and
  • A regular schedule of roundtable events and case study insights to allow members to share and learn best practice.

The new service components, which will be available from September, will combine with Ocki’s existing, freely-accessible news and feature content that aims to help raise awareness about broad sustainability issues and the impacts on products and services. 

 

To download the concise version of the playbook please click the button below to register.

 

Register

Emma Chynoweth

Emma Chynoweth

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