Insights to empower employees
Making allies
Break down silos and fast track cooperation
Early engagement with certain functions is critical to ensure a common understanding of issues and how they should be addressed. OckiPro’s ’Making allies’ insights help sustainability leads engage key allies as they prepare their engagement plans. The functions seen as critical to the success of engagement plans were discussed during roundtables on engaging employees in sustainability and initially include the following departments:
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the board and senior leadership;
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human resources;
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finance;
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internal communications;
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procurement;
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marketing; and
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facilities.
The ’Making allies’ insights provide information on how sustainability is relevant and can support the key functions listed above. They also outline each functions’ role in sustainability, how they can start to work with sustainability professionals, and key questions they might want to ask.
The ’Making allies’ insights are available to all OckiPro member ship levels.
See Making allies: human resources for a freely-accessible example.
Making allies – what organisations think“The higher you go in an organisation the harder it can be to raise awareness about sustainability because people have different priorities. For those that are primarily targeted to maximise profits and shareholder value, Ocki helps its audience to make the business case; it talks about sustainability in terms of unlocking benefits across the business, while acknowledging that often there may be investments to be made or culture/behaviour to change.”
Like what you see? Interested to explore how OckiPro’s membership could support your sustainability engagement activities? Please email info@ockisustainability.com. We’ll get in touch to set up a call to discuss your needs.
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Get the skills
The skills needed to act on sustainability will develop employees overall
What skills do your people need to work more sustainably? What is clear is that many of the skills, such as communication, problem solving and change management, will help them develop as employees overall. OckiPro’s ’Get the skills’ insights are designed as a first step to help you identify the skills employees need to be trained in so that they can respond effectively to sustainability challenges. The skills identified below were discussed during roundtables on engaging employees in sustainability. They include the following areas:
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knowledge;
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empowerment;
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communication;
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having influence and relationship building;
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recognising problems and solving them;
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resilience;
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change management; and
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leadership.
The ’Get the skills’ articles are available to all OckiPro membership levels.
See Get the skills…communication for a freely-accessible example.
Get the skills – what organisations think“Skilling up is a big challenge for us and HR who do the recruitment for us. It is difficult to make people understand the skills we need and that they are important skills, because they are not finance, technical or scientific.”
“It is also challenging when people change roles; it would help if there was more articulation of what kinds of soft skills are needed, like communication, influence and relationship building, resilience and leadership. There’s also management of programmes and partnerships. For social sustainability, it’s all about human rights, labour rights and issues around equality and gender.”
Like what you see? Interested to explore how OckiPro’s membership could support your sustainability engagement activities? Please email info@ockisustainability.com. We’ll get in touch to set up a call to discuss your needs. |
Get the knowledge
Ocki’s ’Get the knowledge’ newsdesk articles explain more than a dozen aspects of sustainability, including human rights, diversity, equity and inclusion, workers rights, water and resource use, climate, biodiversity, fair trade, pollution, waste, circularity, recycling, product design and sustainable business models. They also assess how different product and service sectors, such as electronics, fashion and utilities, impact the various aspects of sustainability. The articles are written by journalists for non-experts to help them understand more about the issues, what actions can be taken, and how to find out more information.
The information, along with all the Ocki newsdesk content, is freely accessible. OckiPro members may use it to engage their employees, for example, it can be used to populate intranets or in newsletters or training programmes, or you could provide employees with a direct link for them to explore.
Making the business case
Use our insights series to help you show the benefits of engaging in sustainability programmes
The reasons for investing in sustainability are manifold, but as organisations face multiple pressures, it is critical that sustainability leads make the case for investment. Our series looks at different aspects to this challenge including making the case for action on climate, nature and social issues, as well as engagement overall.
What our community says about making the business case for engagementDuring our roundtable series on engaging employees in sustainability it was clear that sustainability leads struggled to make the business case for such activities. In fact, several reported that it was also difficult to make the case for sustainability overall, not just engagement.
Like what you see? Interested to explore how OckiPro’s membership could support your sustainability engagement activities? Please email info@ockisustainability.com. We’ll get in touch to set up a call to discuss your needs.
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Case studies
OckiPro includes some short case studies from its roundtable series, but heard that participants would value detailed case studies as part of the service.
While we have approached a number of organisations requesting information none have been able to participate. If you work for an organisation that has a great story to tell about employee sustainability engagement, please get in touch using info@ockisustainability.com. We are asking:
- how employees are engaged on sustainability;
- what approaches have been particularly effective;
- what lessons have been learned; and
- at the end of the day, what impacts could be reported.
In the meantime, we’ll keep plugging away to bring you what we can in terms of case studies.
Case studies – what our network wants“Case studies provide really concrete practical actions to implement.”
“Case studies show actions that have really led to change – they reveal where has the unlock happened. Especially if that is because of employee engagement.”
Like what you see? Interested to explore how OckiPro’s membership could support your sustainability engagement activities? Please email info@ockisustainability.com. We’ll get in touch to set up a call to discuss your needs.
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Take action
Engage different functions on what they can do to improve sustainability
OckiPro’s Action insights provide some high-level suggestions, coupled with a full mapping of different functions to the United Nation’s 17 sustainable development goals (SDGs). The initial set of functions include: board level, HR, finance, marketing, internal communications and procurement. These will be followed with insights for R&D and product development and innovation, manufacturing and production, sales and servicing, product managers, facilities, data, and IT during 2024.
See Actions for human resources for a freely-accessible example.
What our community says“There are quite a few organisations that have got corporate commitments, but they haven’t actually got buy-in for them at all. People are not on the same page. Procurement is so important to get right because of the impact of supply chains. Consumer facing staff is another big one. The concern is are they reinforcing what our customers think or are they influencing them in a positive way? It is an enormous challenge for us.”
Like what you see? Interested to explore how OckiPro’s membership could support your sustainability engagement activities? Please email info@ockisustainability.com. We’ll get in touch to set up a call to discuss your needs. |
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