Engaging employees in climate action

If your colleagues at work are interested in climate, your company’s sustainability goals and what they can do to play an active role, where do you start with engagement? The first rule is to start small and start simple.

Here are a few ideas:

• Climate goals front and centre: Make sure links to your climate strategy and goals are in a prominent place on the homepage of the company intranet. You’ve probably already got a lot of information on the intranet, but it can get lost in the myriad company updates. Work with Internal Communications to ensure that employees can find it when they start looking.
• A chance to reflect: Set up a drop-in session for all employees giving them a time to share their reflections on the climate discussions, ask questions about company strategy, and discuss what they can do about it. Employees are much more likely to take action if they have had a chance to discuss and identify their own goal.
• Run a recruitment drive: If you don’t already have a network of sustainability champions across your organisation, now is the time to set one up. If you do, events like the COPs offer an ideal opportunity to recruit additional champions. Encouraging existing champions to share how they have been involved can help to inspire others.
• Expert opinion: Work with the head of sustainability to write an article, or record a podcast, where you discuss the activities underway, and raise awareness of international efforts, and what they mean for company strategy.
• Training: There are lots of training courses available to raise awareness among employees and engage them in positive steps that they can take in their role (for example the Carbon Literacy Project, Climate Fresk and Axa Climate School). 
  
  More ideas on making climate action a positive employee experience can be found in the report from our recent workshop on How to link sustainability engagement and employee wellbeing (download a copy here).
  
  OckiPro is building a community of experts on sustainability engagement to share advice and best practice. We’d love to hear about the initiatives that have worked for you. Tell us in the comment below.