Culture & behaviours
Why is this area important to embedding sustainability in my organisation?
To embed sustainability effectively into an organisation, it is not sufficient to simply change business processes and have effective organisational structures. The organisations that are most successful in embedding sustainability are those with an ethos that recognises and promotes the importance of sustainability. The objective should be to create a culture where sustainability is seen as an integral part of every aspect of the organisation’s work.
How can such a culture be created?
There are a number of ways to promote a culture that fosters sustainable working practices. Like many new initiatives, the commitment and energy demonstrated by leaders goes a long way in successfully embedding sustainability. The personal support of specific leaders can play an important role in generating or supporting employee engagement.
Alongside leadership commitment is employee motivation and engagement. It is important that colleagues take ownership of the sustainability agenda. Employee motivation and engagement around sustainability are enhanced or supported in organisations where sustainability objectives are built into people's job descriptions and appraisal process. This is the clearest demonstration of an organisation's disposition towards sustainability.
A briefing paper designed for human resource professionals discusses recruitment, incentives and competency development in relation to sustainable development (published by the World Business Council on Sustainable Development and the Cambridge Programme for Industry Business and the Environment Programme).
Leadership support and commitment can be fostered by creating a board-level 'sustainability champion'. This is an important step in demonstrating the organisation's disposition towards sustainability. It recognises the importance of sustainability to the long-term aims of the organisation and helps to overcome perceptions that sustainability is a ‘fad’ which will lose importance over time. It is also helpful to appoint ‘sustainability champions’ throughout the organisation to act as a focal point for sustainability in their area. A case study exploring how a major drinks manufacturer successfully embedded a sustainability culture can be accessed here.
It is important to recognise and celebrate not just good practice, but positive change and successful outcomes where they occur. The benefits of this in enhancing employee motivation and engagement are two-fold:
- staff are more likely to work and act more sustainably if they know that their efforts will be recognised; and
- it proves to others that it is possible to integrate sustainability into the organisations work, and gives them an example to emulate.
More generally, raising awareness of sustainability among employees is important. Successful awareness-raising should focus on exploring sustainability in the context of the particular sector in which the organisation operates. At a more detailed level, it should focus on the part of the organisation in which the members of staff work. This can be achieved through targeted communications and through the organisation’s training scheme. Issues surrounding sustainability training and developing skills are considered in more detail in the Skills module of this website.
Finally, employee engagement and enthusiasm for sustainability can be generated though a one-off event or succession of events such as a Fairtrade week or an energy awareness campaign. These are helpful in encouraging people to consider sustainability, and the most effective events will continue to influence people’s behaviours even after they have ended. It should also be possible to embed sustainability messages or have a physical presence at existing events and conferences.