Harnessing the energy of the workforce for climate transformation - How to successfully build and lead a corporate green team

Tim Riedel is an entrepreneur, systemic organizational consultant and founder of “planetgroups”. The NGO supports employees who want to make their company and their job more sustainable, and it helps sustainability managers and management to involve their employees and get them on board when it comes to sustainability and climate protection.

How to successfully build and manage a “Corporate Green Team”

Sustainable and climate-friendly companies are more successful. Over 6 times more successful, as the start-up “right. based on science” recently showed. With up to 12% higher margins, as the Boston Consulting Group found out back in 2017. At the same time, HR consultancies such as Gallup and ADP regularly find that only 15% of employees are truly emotionally connected to their work. They lack meaning and purpose, they “just come to work”. A similar finding: 86% of all respondents worldwide recently signed the sentence “I want the world to be more sustainable and fairer than before COVID” in a study commissioned by the World Economic Forum.

Connecting these dots, the conclusion is simple: we can make companies more successful by engaging employees who want to protect and regenerate the planet in the transformation. If ever there was a true WIN-WIN-WIN constellation, this is it.

But how do we implement this insight in our companies?

Are so-called “green groups”, i.e. employee groups for sustainability and climate protection, the solution? What can we really expect from them? How can we support them so that they don't just focus on recycled printer paper or reducing plastic bottles while the core business remains largely untouched? What are the success factors that determine whether an Employee Green Group can bring about real and sustainable change in the desired direction?

Success factors for “Employee Green Groups”

With our non-profit consultancy planetgroups, we enable and support employees who want to get involved in sustainability and climate protection in their companies: We create structures, spaces and processes, we open up new perspectives, ideas and inspiration, we organize regular exchanges and meetings - also with planetgroups from other companies - and we ensure a constant influx of momentum and energy in the process through visibility, recognition and positive emotional experiences.

We have identified the following nine success factors for the work of employee-driven “green groups”, both from our own experience and from research and interviews that we conducted before founding our NGO.

1 Approaching sustainability as a management task - employee groups are there to help

All too often, green teams are expected not only to make suggestions on how their company can become more sustainable, but also to implement them. But they are ill-equipped to do so, both in terms of resources, expertise and decision-making power. In most cases, employees do not have a relevant position in the hierarchy, they have no specialist background in sustainability and they are expected to carry out the majority of their climate commitment in addition to their daily workload. That's not really fair, and it's not promising either.

Our advice to employee-driven climate groups is therefore to interpret their role differently. Sustainability is a management task. The groups are “only” there to help. So they shouldn't even try to provide the answers right away - their job is to ask questions. They are the providers of ideas and motivators for change, but not the implementers.

2 Focus on the core

In most cases, sustainability is still seen as a strategy to fix or repair what has destroyed the core business. But this approach can never be sustainable by definition. The actual business must stop damaging the planet - then there is no need to fix it afterwards. We don't have to do anything “on top” to become sustainable; we have to change the way we do what we do in our core business. The framework conditions of our companies (emissions in the production process and through buildings) are of course also important. But above all, sustainability groups should focus on the business case as such, holistically and comprehensively.

Every product sold and every service provided must ultimately contribute to making the world a better and healthier place. The more we sell, the better it must be for our planet. Companies that succeed in this - see above - will be market leaders in their industry, they will attract the best talent, their employees will go to work with the highest motivation and fulfillment, and only then will we restore our planet together.

3 Focus on the business - and the business case

Businesses are systems with a purpose - and the most important purpose of any organization is always to ensure its own viability: in a business, this means earning enough money, ideally with a margin, to recoup all costs.

Employee Green Groups must therefore legitimize their activities within this framework. Now the beauty of sustainability is that, as we have seen above, it generates an immediate business case. Today's customers demand sustainability, the public demands it, politicians demand it, investors demand it, and employees demand it too. Sustainability is increasingly the ideal way to increase sales and margins, keep stability high and costs low. The better green groups focus on this commercial “WIN - WIN” argumentation framework, the greater their chances of getting what they want.

4 An inspiring story

People generally don't like being reminded about the climate crisis. According to Norwegian psychologist Per Espen Stoknes, the four main reasons for our inaction on climate are “doom, distance, dissonance and iDentity.” The story of our planet's self-destruction just doesn't fit with all the other stories we tell ourselves about what matters in our lives.

So if we want our colleagues and leaders to act, we need to tell them an inspiring story that they can positively identify with. Building a better world is one such story. Creating real, customer-centric value for our customers is another. Protecting and improving the lives of our families and home regions is another. Bringing groundbreaking innovations to the world can inspire and engage us. Earning a lot of money and outperforming our competitors can also inspire us. We need to make it clear that whatever we want to achieve will bring tangible progress to our world and our companies right now, that it will create something we will want and enjoy. It is not motivating to just want to avoid something terrible in the future, fear is not a positive stimulant. What is important is that we have a positive image for what we want to achieve together.

5 Bold and ambitious demands

Let's face it, achieving 'Net Zero' by 2050 is neither an ambitious goal, nor inspiring, nor in any way sufficient to save the planet and our species. When we read the latest summary on the state of the planet, it becomes clear that we need to start right now with a complete redesign of our economy, transforming it at unprecedented speed into a regenerative, “planet positive” business model: “To reduce the impact of climate change, it will not be enough to just remove our emissions.” “A fundamental shift in perspective and action is needed that includes ... rebuilding and strengthening resilience as a whole.”

Green groups should prioritize this clear message wherever they can. 'Tinkering' with symptoms will not be enough. As a company, we can proactively shape this change and benefit from it, or we can react defensively and lose our market share to the competition. Any half-hearted ambition that attempts to make minor adjustments to peripheral issues while the core of the business remains unchanged is doomed to failure, both environmentally and commercially.

6 Tolerant and understanding communication

The climate crisis is not the result of a black and white decision or an epic battle of good guys versus bad guys. It is the result of an economic system that has overwhelmingly incentivized the accumulation of money while neglecting the protection and regeneration of our basic natural resources. We must accept and recognize that management and employees have, for the most part, only done and continue to do what they believe is expected of them. Criticizing or shaming them for this may be understandable from an environmental perspective, but it is not helpful if we now want to change the system together.

We are all part of the problem, in one way or another we are both perpetrators and beneficiaries. And all of us can and must now become part of the solution. We all want to live on a healthy planet, we all want to have a future for our children, we all want to earn a decent living, and we all want to work for successful companies. These aspirations are not contradictory, and we should avoid pitting them - and ourselves - against each other. We are all playing on the same team. That is also the main reason why we can still win this game if we finally get into it with our hearts and minds.

7 Structure and persistence

The impact of Green Groups depends largely on the resources and structures that are made available to them. If they can only carry out their tasks after hours, if they have to organize everything themselves, if they are not well represented and networked within the organization, and if their work is not supported by relevant decision-makers in the hierarchy, then they will find it very difficult to achieve sustainable and tangible change. In our approach with planetgroups, we therefore emphasize the need for clear and regular meeting structures and an explicit time budget that each planetgroup member can freely dispose of to pursue “planet projects”.

Yes, this requires investment on the part of the company. But the return far outweighs the effort. Not only does it make the company more successful by making it more sustainable, but it creates amazing added value in the workforce - far beyond the core planetgroup members - in terms of inspiration, engagement, attractiveness, innovation and customer centricity.

8 Best practice examples, benchmarks and exchange

We humans are social creatures. We do more or less what others expect of us. And we change when we see how other people change - especially if we know and trust them. So the best way to change your own company is to show other companies that have done this successfully and benefited from it.

An Employee Green Group should therefore always try to find as many examples as possible from comparable companies in comparable industries, exchange ideas with them, learn from them and use them to convince its own people that change is not only possible, but positive and beneficial.

9 Celebrate successes

Last but not least, there is one key point: it has to be fun. If it's not fun, then we don't do it and then we're not effective.

Research shows time and time again that people are most motivated when they feel connected to others, when they see meaning in what they do and when they feel they are making a difference through their actions. If green groups want to drive change in their organizations, they should make their colleagues feel the same way - connected, meaningful and impactful. The easiest way to achieve this is through positive messaging, enjoyable meetings and regular mutual recognition for all involved.

How we build and manage successful green teams

These nine recommendations may sound like an impossible task. We'll never manage it... But many employees and many companies have already successfully taken this path. It's not that difficult once you've made the decision.

If you would like to take advantage of the support of our NGO planetgroups, simply send us an email to info@planetgroups.net. We are happy to help, and our assistance is always free of charge until we have the management “on board” - and even then our support is not expensive. We are always available for an initial discussion.

But you can also do a lot without us. Together with colleagues and strategic functions such as HR, communications, sustainability or strategy, you can organize the necessary buy-in and resources from management to get started. The nine recommendations above are intended to help shape the process. Of course, every company is different, every Green Group has its own context, opportunities and constraints. But everything we do will make a difference and influence the dynamics of the system. There is no reason not to get started.

Good luck and success!