Never underestimate the power of thank you!

Consumers directly control 60% of the UK’s carbon emissions. I got to hear this on a seminar last week put together by Energy Saving Trust and RSA. A very good event, by the way, represented companies included giants such as Barclays, Sainsbury’s and BT. It was an inspiring way of starting the day and the compact format of the event (two hours) ensured that you could start working on the ideas gained as soon as you had landed back in your office.

Individual consumers who have such a great power to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions are also employees and that’s what the event was about. How do you engage with your employees? How do you initiate and enable behaviour change? The message was two-fold: behaviour change towards improved sustainability is about enlightened self-interest. It became clear that companies try to reach their employees through “what’s in it for me” approach. The style of communication (non-corporate language, let’s have a bit of fun), multiple channels (events, competitions, online resources, exhibitions) and frequency of communication are all embedded in the sustainability strategies.
But sustainability is not only about enlightened self-interest and potential prizes. It is also about meaningfulness of one’s own existence. Organisations need to convince their employees that they want to stay with a company because of its values and how it is living up those values. And, it is not only recent graduates that are raising questions about their employer’s sustainability credentials; also older generations are waking up to the same call. It matters who you work for.
If this is the case, it means that organisations are becoming more like political actors. In a good way, that is. What I mean is that sustainability agendas create dynamics through which organisations want to engage with their employees. This means they need to listen to their employees. Thus, organisations create opportunities for two-way communication and employees become more empowered. It sounds very much like civic engagement to me. Companies become like micro-size civil societies where participation becomes the norm. In Habermasian terms organisations could become 21st century coffee houses: places where people get together around a common concern to talk about ‘matters of importance’, thus expressing their views and through collective power becoming involved in their companies’ decision making processes.

Too idealistic? Not necessarily, as the examples from BT reveal. Their starting point for the sustainability agenda was to go and talk to employees and ask how they would like to be engaged. Now BT has staff Carbon Clubs, each of which focusing on a specific area of interest. BT has also created more general social networking tools à la Facebook. Both of these initiatives enabling two-way communication, increasing voluntary participation and, as a result, strengthening the feeling of belonging and creating trust. You could expand on the subject by writing extensively about trust and how it forms an important basis for a successful society.
All this is actually very straightforward psychology: people feel their work is valued and that they are respected. The power of thank you shouldn’t be underestimated.

Although highly inspired by the event I still have two questions in my mind: working in the Higher Education sector myself, where do universities position themselves in this debate? How do we engage with our students and staff and can we say that we are at the frontline when it comes to changing behaviours? I hope the answer is yes, but to me it seems that at the moment companies are light years ahead of us.
Last, if changing behaviours is a long project – approximately 6-7 years according to one panellist – why does that work start only at the work place? To what extent should we be teaching sustainability at primary schools?

Anne Raudaskoski
Anne works as a CSR Research & Development Officer at the University of Westminster. She’s a member of The Sustainability Writers Network (TSWN).
anne.raudaskoski@gmail.com
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