Why Talking to Colleagues about Climate Change is Important to Business

Climate Change Is Here And We Need To Talk About It

You don’t even need to watch the news or look at your social media to see that climate change is real and here, now. From the record temperatures to flash floods, it has become impossible to ignore its impact.

 

This has seen a huge increase in demand from people everywhere for the world’s countries to adopt more climate-friendly policies.

 

A knock-on effect of this has seen pressure on businesses to accept their part in climate change and develop climate-focused strategies moving forward.

 

This need for change is being driven by employees and consumers and often as a result of feeling overwhelmed by the challenges we all face, both individually and as businesses.

 

It’s important to talk about climate change, but by focusing on and talking about what you can do, employee anxiety is reduced.

Why Being Sustainable Is Important To Business

Whilst the climate was once last on the agenda, since COVID and the increasingly noticeable unusual weather, it is now top of the agenda and understanding what sustainability means to your business is critical to overcoming the challenges to come.

 

All businesses need to be more proactive about what they can do to make their operations more sustainable.

 

Sustainability is a positive thing, but it requires time and to some extent, money, to change business strategies and invest in sustainable solutions.

 

The importance of having discussions on the advantages of adopting sustainable practices cannot be overstated as changing culture requires universal support from within the business.

 

Having a transparent sustainability strategy also helps attract and retain better employees and this is backed up by a recent study carried out by IBM which found that 71% of employees wanted to work for a business that had strong environmental and social credentials.

 

As governments seek ways to hit their agreed Net Zero targets, tendering processes for businesses have seen an increase in the focus on sustainability with up to 30% of tender applications asking about social and environmental policy.

 

Educating and promoting conversations around sustainability will enthuse employees and quite often businesses find sustainable solutions and sustainability leaders from within.

Be Part of The Solution…

Educating and Communicating About Climate Change

Recent studies showed that 75% of UK citizens and 67% of US citizens suffered from some form of Climate Anxiety, which is why education and conversation around climate change are so important to businesses.

 

By working in this way and providing education to employees, your business will be responsible for passing the knowledge learned onto friends and family through social interaction, conversations and behaviour reflection.

 

Through educating and encouraging positive change and having a can-do attitude, businesses will be surprised by the positive engagement that will happen.

 

Accepting past flaws as simply opportunities to do things better and empowering the team to be part of the solution will genuinely promote positive culture change.

We’ve Bought in to Sustainability, What’s Next?

Action and transparency are key.

 

Looking for the perfect solution leads to procrastination and simply put, doing something is infinitely better than doing nothing, so just start.

 

Focus on what you are doing well, make that part of your sustainability page and go from there.

 

Once started with something, build a plan, have a framework for the future and publish it whilst making sure that the whole process is transparent to employees, consumers and stakeholders.

 

It helps to have a Carbon Footprint Report for the business to use as a benchmark and this can then be remeasured yearly to see progress.

 

Keep the steps simple and achievable and keep the team involved, empowered and engaged.

 

The trick is lots and lots of small steps over a period of time, after all, Everest wasn’t conquered in one giant stride, or by those that never started, it was conquered by those that got going and kept going simple step after simple step!

 

Collaboration is also important to sustainability and the ‘green’ community is full of companies and individuals available to help businesses on their sustainable journey.

 

By doing this and keeping everything transparent, brand value, employee happiness (and thus productivity), consumer loyalty and overall credibility are improved.

 

None of these changes happens overnight and neither do the rewards, but they do happen and they stick – it’s a case of sustainability makes a business sustainable!

Making Team Engagement Sustainable – The Take Away

Sustainability is a huge topic which is why there is so much anxiety surrounding it. Not only that, but people learn in small bites so information overload is a real danger.

 

Drip feeding education, tips, knowledge and ways to change is the best way to make change stick and keep engagement levels high.

 

Running sustainability challenges is a good way to keep the team involved and it can be tied into education to create even more engagement.

 

Providing employees with online tools to see and track their impact is also a great way to engage your team and connect them with sustainability.

 

The intent is there for consumers and employees alike to take the sustainable path and those businesses that realise that and provide ways for intent to turn into action will be the ones that succeed.

 

Such is the awareness in business that a 2022 study showed that 9 out of 10 businesses in the UK, US and Canada intend to build sustainability into their business.

 

The takeaway is, don’t wait, get started now engaging your team and business on sustainability or your business might be playing catch up for a long time to come.


Play It Green was founded to help businesses like yours engage employees and to support you on your journey to Net Zero.

 

This is done whilst having an instant environmental and social impact through reforestation and regiving 10% of turnover to a good cause of your choice.

 

Get in touch to find out more about how Play It Green can help your business on its Net Zero journey, whilst meeting a minimum of 10 of the United Nations Sustainable Development goals.

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