Without employee buy-in and active engagement in ESG initiatives, even the best-planed strategies risk becoming superficial efforts rather than transformative actions. Employees need to understand these goals and connect with them.
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Do employees know how to contribute to the ESG strategy?
While companies’ ESG strategies get progressively sophisticated and organizations’ leadership understand how crucial it is to craft a strong environmental, social and governance framework of action, there is another very important pending issue that often goes unnoticed.
Most employees are completely unaware of how to contribute to these sustainability initiatives or goals. In fact, in many cases, they don’t even understand what sustainability means for the company itself in the first place.
Such a disconnect between a company’s strategic goals and employees’ productivity is quite a significant problem. ESG initiatives should actually be designed to influence everything across the organization, from supply chain management to customer interactions.
How a CSO drives sustainable change across the organization
However, without employee buy-in and active engagement in these initiatives, even the best-planed strategies risk becoming superficial efforts rather than transformative actions. Employees need to understand these goals and connect with them.
But how can companies bridge the gap between strategy and daily operations? Here are a few actionable ways to address this challenge and turn your workforce into active participants of the company’s ESG journey.
First thing first, training and communication
There are two main root causes that create such a disconnect between a company’s sustainability strategy and employees’ contribution to it in their day to day: a lack of knowledge or formal training in sustainability matters, and bad or null internal communication on the issue.
And so, one of the first steps needed to empower employees to contribute to the ESG strategy is offering them the necessary education and/or training. A lack of understanding about sustainability issues often lies on the lack of accessible information available to employees.
In turn, many employees view ESG as a high-level concept confined to boardroom discussions and far removed from their actual day-to-day. Changing this perception is crucial and requires an effort to communicate what ESG means for the organization.
Leveraging technology to empower employee engagement
Leveraging technology is a game-changer when it comes to engaging employees in sustainability efforts. Sustainability softwares and digital platforms provide an interactive and scalable way to connect employees to ESG initiatives, regardless of their role or location.
These type of tools are particularly helpful as they can break down sustainability goals and offer employees tangible and actionable ways to contribute to them. Gamification features, for example, can further motivate employees by introducing an element of friendly competition as well as real-time dashboards that make progress visible.
Moreover, technology allows for a personalized engagement where employees can access tailored learning modules. By providing these opportunities, technology not only simplifies participation but also cultivates a deeper connection to the ESG mission.
Do your employees know how to contribute to the ESG strategy?
Embedding sustainability into the company culture
Even if the latter strategies are significantly helpful to achieve the necessary employee engagement, it is not enough to treat sustainability as a separate initiative, it needs to be embedded into the organizational culture.
This requires a top-down commitment from leadership as well as grassroots efforts from employees. But, only when employees see that sustainability is not just a corporate mandate but a genuine priority, they’re more likely to embrace it.
Fostering a sense of community around ESG initiatives goes a long way. When sustainability becomes a shared experience, it evolves from an obligation into a source of pride and engagement.
Building employee engagement across the company
In DoGood, we aim to simplify the complex web of sustainability objectives for companies by offering a platform that translates the high-level ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) objectives into actionable tasks for every single employee.
Then, each employee not only knows how to make an impact but also feels empowered to contribute meaningfully to the greater sustainable strategy.
No more vague directives. No confusion. DoGood automates the process, making it seamless for the workforce to know precisely what steps to take.
