Climate change is omnipresent, awareness of sustainability is growing and tens of thousands of young people are taking to the streets in favour of systemic change. With this introduction, we don't want to draw attention to the climate crisis, but to the young people demonstrating - your future employees.
Why Green HR
In the future, you will be working with a generation that is concerned about the environment, thinks about the future and expects its employers to take responsibility. This is exactly where you can start as HR: If a company accepts this responsibility and takes action, it not only becomes part of the solution, but also gives itself an advantage in the job market. While some companies are struggling to find qualified staff, jobs in non-profit and environmental organisations seem to be becoming increasingly popular.
A study by Ipsos MORI shows that 74% of respondents agree with the statement: "When I hear about a company's contribution to society and the environment, I would trust the words of a person who has worked in the company more than an advert or brochure.". The same study shows that 75% of employees who are convinced that their employer takes sufficient responsibility rate their commitment to the company as high. By comparison, only 49% of respondents who do not feel that their employer takes responsibility rate their commitment as high.
If you want your company to position itself as sustainable, the measures must not only be genuine and credible, but must also be recognised and appreciated by employees. These measures should therefore be approached strategically and across departments.
Ideas, inputs, approaches
In our own strategy session, we considered docking points for sustainable measures that you can influence as HR. We would like to present some of them to you below:
Travel/expense regulations
You can offer your employees incentives to use sustainable modes of transport. Train journeys, for example, could count as working time, while air travel could be counted as free time. The CO2 emissions from flights can also be offset on the website
www.myclimate.ch
.
Working from home and cycling
You can enable employees with longer commutes to work to work from home. For employees with shorter commutes, you could make cycling more attractive, for example by offering a bike-to-work programme like the one in England or participation in the "Bike to Work" campaign, combined with a bike repair service directly on site.
Give employees a say
You can give your employees the opportunity to get actively involved in a project of their choice, for example with one paid volunteering day per year.
Implementation in companies
We recommend a balanced mix of measures in which the company relies on employee participation and those that the company can implement independently. Examples include filling the fruit bowl with local products or offering sustainable and organic cleaning products and drinks. Ultimately, the issue of sustainability should not be passed on to employees, but should be tackled together.
There are various ways in which you can motivate your employees to get involved:
- Education: Explain the reasons for the measures to your employees.
- Co-design: Give them the opportunity to scrutinise the measures and, even better, to actively help shape them. People will only participate if they understand the meaning behind a measure.
If there is acceptance for the measures, you can promote this further through nudging. For example, if someone wants to book a flight, a pop-up window could point out that 80 % of employees use the train for the same journey. This encourages others to do the same as the majority. You can find more information on nudging in HR at here .
To ensure that the sustainability strategy does not have any negative effects, you should bear a few points in mind when developing the measures:
Inspire rather than prohibit or condemn: Don't ban air travel completely, but reward train travel instead.
Don't limit yourself to cost-saving measures: Refrain from abolishing Christmas cards without replacement under the pretext of sustainability. Support a climate protection project instead.
Ensure that measures are truly sustainable:
- If paper is dispensed with: Is the additional server space required more sustainable?
- Is the energy required to produce a reusable cup actually offset by the number of times it is used?
- Does it make sense to switch to electric cars or is it more sustainable to use the existing company cars for longer?
Green Future
We too are still at the beginning when it comes to "Green HR". However, we are convinced that it is essential to address sustainability and the climate crisis in HR in order to meet the needs of our employees. We are eager to hear your thoughts and ideas and look forward to discussing the topic of "Green HR" with you.
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