How to empower and engage your employees to build a sustainable workplace

Businesses worldwide are embracing sustainable practices to reduce their carbon emissions and to comply with new regulations. Sustainability has now become a boardroom priority for C-suite executives worldwide. What’s more, 71% of workers consider a company’s environmental record when deciding on an employer.

Businesses are increasingly adopting sustainable practices to create a greener workplace. A crucial aspect of this effort is being environmentally conscious of daily activities – whether it is hybrid working, using cloud technologies, energy-efficient products, or ways to commute to work. Every bit adds up, and this requires the active participation of your employees. So, how do you motivate your employees to adopt sustainable technologies/practices? How do you make them sustainability champions?

Promote employee engagement: Inform and educate your employees about your sustainability efforts, progress made, and how they help. Set up regular cadence through emails and town halls to keep your workforce well-informed and engaged throughout the sustainability implementation process. Address resistance by understanding the causes, managing issues and establishing avenues for open dialogue.

In 2023, we further developed our circularity approach through our global zero waste standard. We galvanized employees through a global Zero Hero campaign, encouraging colleagues to redirect and repurpose unwanted office items. Globally, our waste per employee has reduced by 69% from our baseline in 2019, with our total waste reduced by 60% over the same period.

Focus on experience: To build a sustainable workplace, eco-friendly device choices and circularity are some of the key concepts to reduce carbon emissions. Along with a device strategy, think about set of services to enhance end user experience. Empower your employees to make the most of workplace solutions to contribute towards sustainability goals of your organization.

We recommend a persona-driven approach to better target messaging, engage employees, and address their concerns. Defining profiles of various employees’ segments that details their characteristics, wants, and needs helps to deliver on interests of various stakeholders across the organization.

For a leading producer and supplier of natural gas provider we undertook a sustainable devices project to meet their ambition of becoming carbon neutral by 2035. We chose a persona-based fit for purpose approach while selecting the hardware for their employees. The collective effort resulted in saving of 231 tCO2e per annum which is a reduction of over 37% on the total.

Empower your employees: Training your workforce on sustainability concepts and tools is key to the success of your sustainability initiatives. Employee engagement is essential to reduce carbon footprint and turn your sustainability ambitions into action. Designing a sustainability curriculum, upskilling your workforce on sustainability topics motivates employees to adopt sustainable practices at the workplace. Educate your employees on sustainability topics through e-learning, webinars and on-the job training. Offer certificates and rewards to employees completing the training program.

In June 2022, we launched our internal “sustainability campus” to centralize sustainability learning and facilitate upskilling on this critical topic. Since its launch, 70% of our employees have completed the Globe Awareness module.

Beyond this foundation learning module, the campus has evolved to offer industry-specific modules, Green IT training and programs with external universities. Employees can customize training based on roles and industries, empowering them to adopt sustainable actions in the workplace and for their clients.

Foster behavior change: Building a sustainable workplace is more than just implementing a set of technologies; its about fostering a behavior change by helping employees to minimize waste and conserve resources. A culture of sustainability should be promoted as a fundamental organizational principle rather than a peripheral initiative.

Upskill employees for a mindset shift towards systems thinking and circular design. Currently, less than a third (28%) of organizations are upskilling design teams with sustainable design skillsets.

A change management strategy is essential to encourage new behaviors towards sustainability. Establish a change community to share best practices, provide inputs, and influence others while being sustainability ambassadors. Implementing gamification techniques is a good way to inspire employees to collaborate, share and interact.

For a leading financial institution, we implemented Microsoft 365 to support their vision of hybrid work. To promote widespread adoption of the Microsoft 365 solution, we needed to make sure that employees were not only trained but also took an active role in adopting new ways of working. Capgemini designed a gamification solution to drive up enthusiasm and adoption. This resulted in 70–80% Teams adoption rate and 14,747 kg reduction in carbon emissions.

All said, make employees an integral part of your workplace sustainability strategy. Foster an environment where employees are motivated to contribute towards your net zero targets.

Learn how organizations can leverage My sustainability score to engage employees in their sustainability initiatives, drive behavioral change and adopt eco-friendly habits to build a greener workplace. 

If you are looking to build a sustainable workplace, talk to us!