How to make employee sustainability engagement fun

A lot of people are aware of climate change and other sustainability issues, and want to act, but Lauren told workshop delegates that many struggle to do so. She asked: “How do we bridge the value–action gap?” Her advice on how to get started, what motivates people, how to make engagement exciting, and how to track and measure progress is presented below, along with examples from participants.

Two top-level take-homes from the workshop include:

• it takes time and effort to engage and act on sustainability, there’s no silver bullet; and
• adopt a bottom-up approach to innovating on sustainability to get employee buy-in, and combine that approach with top-down leadership, with your board and senior leadership team driving sustainability forward.

Getting started

• Recognise that action requires time and effort – these are the biggest barriers that need to be overcome.
• Align sustainability actions back to a set of values (your organisation’s culture, values, mission and sustainability strategy should all be aligned). For example, run workshops to agree values and the ESG strategy together, because people will see the connections and feel invested in both. And you can communicate the process and outcomes across the organisation, providing transparency.
• Build up people’s appetite with teasers. Tell them something is going to happen, and they are going to be involved. They are going to have an opportunity to improve the business and save the planet!
• Make it convenient for people to join. For example, one workshop participant set up a lunch-and-learn, allowing people to get involved during their lunch breaks. Be inviting, say: “Come and have a go at this.” 
• Consider using an external facilitator to take people out of their day-to-day routine. Similarly, consider getting people out of the office, and away from their emails and other distractions, for example, go on a return-to-nature day. 
• Break information down and make it accessible. Make sessions interactive. Use games and quizzes to get facts and messages across in a fun way. 
• Maintain engagement to ensure actions don’t slip.

Motivation

• Lauren recommended reading Drive by Dan Pink. This book lays out the Autonomy, Mastery and Purpose approach. People like to be autonomous, we don’t want to be micromanaged. There’s a joy in finding information out and doing work ourselves, creatively. Also, as people we like to grow and master challenges. People also want purpose, which is relevant to sustainability.
• People are not just motivated by money. We want to be productive, feel like we are doing what we want to do, and we want to learn something new. We want to be appreciated. Say ‘thank you’ for a job well done, but also think of other rewards (see below).
• One participant noted that when it comes to sustainability, hard hitting facts are the truth; but they can be demotivating. People switch off.

Making engagement exciting

• Get people in the room (it is a struggle to get people excited virtually). Use quizzes and games to learn. Don’t hand out tasks. Get people to come up with solutions, as well as being creative, we are more likely to support and implement initiatives we’ve played a part in formulating. (Two rooms, one task and blank cheque examples). 
• Make time and space for your audience to understand the problem and innovate solutions. Do you know what issues your employees want to engage in? Do you know the extent of their existing knowledge and engagement? Again, quizzes are useful to engage employees and understand what they do or do not know. For example, play ‘quick, which bin?’ to see what people know about waste recycling. In the longer term, check actual recycling practices and reward the best office. So you make it fun, but also have accountability.
• Don’t make it overwhelming. Prioritise issues if your organisation faces multiple challenges. If they are not connected, tackle one at a time. If the information you are trying to get across is complex and technical, try to deliver it in ‘bite-size’ manageable sessions. Also, don’t use acronyms and jargon. Speak clearly, use analogies, and different formats for different learning styles. 
• Make the experience rewarding. This doesn’t need to equate to money in the pocket. Pizza anyone? Or anything from virtual high-fives to getting time off to having a fund to spend on green activities – whatever fits in with your culture. Rewards also mean you can inject a bit of friendly competition in sustainability activities. 

Tracking and measuring

• What sustainability objectives can you embed in people’s targets, such as objectives and key results (OKRs) or key performance indicators (KPIs)? Think about data that will help you measure progress and impacts, further contributing to transparency.
• Tracking progress can be tricky, for example, how do you measure recycling rates (one workshop participant worked with his organisation’s cleaning contractors to do this. Others had networks of ‘green’ champions who kept metrics.) It is super important to measure progress to report back, so that people know what impact they are making.
• To maintain momentum, use something like the sustainability success wheel, Lauren runs a workshop on this, or Ocki’s engagement wheel (See Engagement Playbook). 
• Admit you are on a journey. Make sure after an initiative is announced that there is follow through so it is completed effectively.

Example from one workshop participant: To celebrate the company’s 75th anniversary, 100 or so staff split into groups of ten and went within a mile radius of the office to take photos of things they saw, from street signs to shops, to make a collage that showed off sustainability aspects, such as recycling or electric cars. It got everyone outside of the office, was interactive and involved teamwork. 

Ocki’s next free virtual workshop, in the ’How to...’ series is on 10 October between 14.00-15.00 BST. It focuses on How to link sustainability engagement and employee wellbeing. Register here.

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