Putting people at the heart of your sustainability strategy
07/17/2023
The journey to becoming more sustainable is a long term one and contains many steps. It requires a clear strategy, detailed planning, and an openness to new ways of thinking and working.
The effectiveness of any strategy, depends upon people being willing and able to execute it. In this article, we discuss some of the steps organisations can take to put people at the heart of their sustainability strategy and planning.
Recruitment and retention
There is growing evidence that organisations with strong sustainability credentials have a better chance of attracting and keeping the best staff and volunteers.
A survey earlier this year found nearly half of employees and graduates want the organisation they work for to demonstrate a commitment to Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), and one-fifth have turned down a job offer because an organisation’s ESG commitments did not match their own values.
Sustainable employment involves considering people’s needs holistically, rather than just through the lens of their work. This could involve:
- Ongoing development and training
- Ensuring a flexible and supported work-life balance
- Providing health and wellbeing benefits and support
At the recruitment stage, organisations should consider how they can best showcase their sustainability credentials, for example by incorporating them into job adverts, job applications, inductions and other on-boarding documents.
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion
Considering workforce equality, diversity and inclusion is imperative in order to meet the needs of your people and the communities you serve – and therefore become a more sustainable organisation over the long-term. Best practice approaches in this area typically involve collaboration and engagement with a wide range of stakeholders both inside and outside the organisation.
Again, the recruitment stage is a good opportunity for organisations to emphasise their commitment to equality, diversity and inclusion, for example, through practising anonymous recruitment in order to eliminate unconscious bias, incorporating diversity and inclusion credentials into job descriptions, and asking applicants to explain how they would support inclusivity.
In order to understand and improve equality, diversity and inclusion within workforces, organisations must first understand their baseline so must collect and collate good quality data. Some organisations in the public and voluntary sectors use online HR systems which allow staff to record their protected characteristics, so workforce data can be collected and collated. Dashboards can then be used to help leaders measure progress over time.
For some organisations, particularly smaller charities, data collection and analysis can be an additional burden on resources. In a previous post on sustainable strategy and planning, we explained some of the support available to help voluntary organisations manage and analyse data more effectively, including the Royal Statistical Society’s pro bono scheme, Statisticians for Society.
Engagement and communication
A recent Zurich Municipal survey demonstrated that it cannot be taken for granted that strategies will be understood and embedded across the workforce. The survey, reported in our whitepaper, The Sustainability Shift: People, found that nearly 60% of people have no involvement in their organisation’s sustainability agenda, while 40% are unsure if their organisation even has a sustainability strategy.
One way of building engagement could be to create employee-led green champions or green squads, who could be responsible for sourcing sustainability training, promoting sustainability initiatives, sharing tips, and scrutinising the organisation’s sustainability plans.
In the same way, employee inclusivity champions or panels can play an important role in promoting equality, diversity and inclusion across the organisation, including scrutinising job adverts and the process for selecting candidates for interview.
Organisations must also be able to communicate effectively to external stakeholders, in order to explain what they are doing to become more sustainable. Our previous article on sustainable strategy and planning identified a number of organisations that provide communications advice, training and expertise to charities, particularly smaller organisations with limited resources.
Read the entire series
- Sustainability and the role of the voluntary sector
- Supporting organisations to become financially sustainable
- Strategy, planning and sustainability in the voluntary sector
- Repair and reuse - helpful resources to support charities' sustainability goals
- Using technology sustainably - how charities can support digital inclusion
- Legal resources to help organisations operate sustainably
