Make waves in your workplace and inspire environmental action
So you care about climate change, you're taking your own steps to help the environment and now you want to influence your workplace more to make a tangible difference, too. Well, you're in the right place! Companies are under increasing pressure to set and meet emissions targets and, whilst your company may have nailed its sustainability strategy, it can be difficult to demonstrate what these sometimes lofty, distant goals mean in the eyes of team members. Combining environmental action with employee engagement has never felt so needed in the workplace. Here are eight ways to bring the team together to take action and showcase your company's wider commitment to tackling environmental issues.
These tips are part of something bigger. At Hubbub, we want to see a world where everyone makes choices that are good for the environment. Check out what we do and how your actions add up.
A green team is made up of employees who volunteer their time to focus on environmental issues and help the company sharpen their sustainability strategy. They can act as change-agents within the organisation and influence positive change both internally and externally – it could be anything from removing single use cups in the office to running company-wide environmental challenges. The first step could be getting colleagues to sign up to join the green team before setting up your first meeting to raise issues and problem-solve together. Then, you can start to plan your first event! At Hubbub we’ve found hosting these events around a film screening of a documentary like Our Planet: Too Big to Fail that introduces an environmental issue – is a fun way to start and to set the context of a discussion.
Carry out some research to gauge employee engagement, satisfaction and interest to find out things like which environmental areas are most relevant to your colleagues and how engaged they are with the company’s current ESG goals – and identify any gaps in knowledge. This can help them to understand what role they can play to support their organisation in their ESG goals/net zero targets. This could be a great first task for the Green Team to lead on! At Hubbub we have carried out many workplace research projects so give us a shout if you’d like a hand.
With many people now working hybrid, help your team to think of ways to green their both their homes, offices and home offices! Think dialling down on energy bills and reducing the amount of waste they produce to help your company meet emissions targets. Why not turn it into a nicely competitive race? Get in touch if you’d like us to help run this for you.
In the UK we eat around twice the global average of meat (UN FAO) and this comes with a massive environmental impact – in fact animal farming alone is responsible for 14.5% of global emissions. Dialling down meat consumption is one of the biggest ways the team can help the environment. And can you imagine if hundreds (thousands?) of your team mates bound together to give it a crack? Challenge them to swap animal protein for plants through an organisation-wide challenge.
Have you got old tech lying around the office or the homes of your colleagues? Gifting it to those in need is a fantastic way to cut electronic waste, reduce carbon emissions and help digitally isolated people get connected. Check out Hubbub’s pioneering smartphone donation initiative in partnership with O2, Community Calling. So far, it’s already transformed the lives of 15,000 people nationwide and we’re looking for businesses to help us continue to grow the number of phones reused and people connected. You can get the company your work for to support Community Calling in three simple ways:
- Gift redundant business smartphones
- Provide a financial donation
- Become a Community Calling partner
Everyone loves a day away from your desk or an offsite, right? Even better, one where fun and doing good go hand-in-hand. From tree planting to litter picking, there are tonnes activities to get colleagues up off their chairs. But, if you’re up for a totally original (and wonderfully peculiar!) idea, why not gather a group of colleagues to go Plastic Fishing? What’s that, we hear you say? Come aboard 'Poly-Mer' or 'Vitamin Sea', the world’s first 99% recycled plastic punts, and explore the impact of plastic and other litter on waterways around Canary Wharf whilst clearing up the docklands! Find out more.
Is it time to join some of the world’s best-loved, and most impactful ‘do good’ businesses? Would you like your company to meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose? A company with B Corp certification helps consumers to distinguish between businesses that are doing good socially and environmentally, and those that aren’t. Find out more about B Corp and what it means to use profits and growth as a means to a greater end: positive impact for employees, communities, and the environment.
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Check out our other tips for easy inspiration on how you can live in a more sustainable way.
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