Building a green culture
If a business is to reach its net zero goals, getting their entire workforce aligned behind their targets is critical.
‘Companies that are winning the sustainability battle have created the conditions for their stakeholders to own sustainability. In these companies, sustainability is not someone else’s problem.’ -- Harvard Business Review, CB Bhattacharya
Research increasingly shows that sustainability cannot be siloed off into an ESG team; its ambitions must be baked into every job description in order for them to be realised.
But how might a company accomplish this? Again, let's think small first. How about:
- Making sustainability part of every new hire's onboarding process
- Finding and empowering the climate activists amongst your workforce
- Shouting about your company's environmental targets at every available opportunity
- Surveying your employees to find out where they're currently at, and what support they need
- Ensuring that conversations around sustainability form a part of an employee's regular review process
Of course, every company is different—what works for some might not work for others, due to the unique needs, structures or demographics within their workforce.
This is why we advise all our customers to set up segments as part of their Pawprint onboarding process, so that we're able to map out the data they receive from their Scope 3 survey against relevant employee groupings. This allows us to gather richer, more detailed data; track trends; and deliver more insightful suggestions into how they can organically grow a green culture within their business.
And only then... offsetting
We've spoken at length about offsetting in a previous blog, but it always bears repeating that offsetting is not a replacement for reduction. Plenty of companies are offsetting while also taking steps to reduce their impact, however, which is great! Here are a few key things to keep in mind when looking into offsetting programmes.
- Consider the people involved; both their livelihoods and their wellbeing. Team Pawprint works on the principle that action on climate change shouldn’t come at a cost to people
- Look out for greenwashing! Ensure that the project you’re investing in is actually doing the good it says it’s doing
- Make sure the offsetting is permanent