CSR and the environment are steadily making their way to the top of the business agenda. Standard Chartered Bank’s head of sustainability, Debbie Whitaker, speaking at JSB’s Green HR conference later this year, explains how HR can help drive the green initiative.

Author: Debbie Whitaker, head of sustainability, Standard Chartered Bank

Topic: CSR

OVERVIEW

Mankind is causing climate change by burning nature’s stores of oil, coal and natural gas. This releases billions of tones of carbon dioxide (CO2) every year. If current trends continue we will raise atmospheric CO2 concentrations to double pre-industrial levels during this century. Most scientists believe that this will be enough to raise global temperatures by around 2˚C to 5˚C, which will have serious implications. There is a need for urgent action – unless green house gas emissions reduce and stabilise to ‘safer’ levels in the next five years, there will be irreversible damage.

The effects of global warming and climate change are bringing unpredictable changes:

• Melting glaciers and rainfall are causing some rivers to overflow, whilst evaporation is emptying others
• Diseases are spreading
• Some crops grow faster while others see yields slashed by disease and drought
• Strong storms and hurricanes are becoming more frequent and destructive
• Artic sea ice is melting faster every year
• Clashes over dwindling water resources may cause conflict in many regions of the world
• Warming of the oceans, combined with melting ice on land, is raising sea levels
(Source: The New Scientist)

• These changes present both risks and opportunities for companies long-term, whether because they affect business directly (e.g. insurance, agriculture) or in the case of global corporates, they affect economic growth in countries where they operate, potentially affecting their own long-term business success. Companies have a range of strategic responses to choose from, and choose they must. Corporates must play a key role in minimising climate change, along with governments, civil society and non government organisations (NGOs).

• Furthermore, if we continue to consume natural resources at the current rate, we will need three planets. This puts strain on the environment’s capacity to deal with our waste products, exacerbating damage.

• To ensure companies develop appropriate strategic responses to climate change, Human Resources (HR) professionals need to step up and shape the agenda. This guide provides some ideas to determining strategy and implementing a change programme.

WHEN TO USE THIS GUIDE

• How to determine your organisation’s strategic approach to environment and/or climate change issues
• What HR can do to help their company promote a leadership position on environment and climate change
• Introducing a communications and change management programme to raise employees’ awareness of the issues and affect real behavioural change to reduce their own environmental impact

10-STEP ACTION PLAN
 
What’s your company’s strategy on environment/climate change?

1. Identify your company’s current strategy

Depending on the nature of your company’s business or where it is in its evolution, here are the typical components and business benefits:

• ‘Hygiene’ or threshold level of reducing your company’s use of energy, water and materials - which also reduces operating costs
• Promotion of sound environmental practices through supply chain management and selection of the customers you do business with
• Development of ‘green’ products or services to meet customers’ growing concerns for the environment - and develop new revenue opportunities
• Communications and change management both with your employees – to create engagement and pride in your company and a strong employer brand

2. Developing a communications and change plan

Decide whether there is more to be done and influence change with the board or management team by creating a business case for change. As a minimum, develop a communications and change campaign to engage your employees (see below). Make them feel proud they work for a company that takes its corporate responsibilities seriously.

3. Develop a comprehensive communications and change plan targeted at your employees

 A successful change plan is likely to contain many of the following components, which are covered below:

• Sponsorship – ‘walking the talk’
• Communications planning – creating a case for change
• Getting your employees actively involved
• Positive recognition and reinforcement for the right behaviours
• Embedding ‘green’ approaches as a way of doing business 
• Measuring the impact of your change programme

4. Get your sponsor(s) to ‘walk the talk’

Any successful change programme needs to have a respected business sponsor. The CEO or a senior member of the management team is ideally suited as environment issues impact the organisation’s whole operations. Avoid this being seen as an HR initiative - otherwise it will be dead in the water! Agree with the sponsor that he/she will be seen to lead.

Develop a plan where he/she not only gives the right messages as part of the communications campaign, but actually ‘walks the talk’. Agree some actions or behaviours to be adopted which send the right signals and makes employees take notice, e.g. walking or taking public transport to work, investing in a key piece of energy saving technology etc.

5. Create a compelling case for change through your communications plan

Create awareness of the issues of climate change and the need for urgent action among employees – but create a compelling ‘hook’ to engage them. Talking about climate change at a macro global level may make the subject too remote and impersonal. Pick examples which make it real and tangible to employees in each of the countries where you operate.

Examples include:

• Rain and flooding (Tewkesbury, UK)
• Water shortages and drought (many parts of Africa, Australia etc)
• Pollution and poor air quality (Hong Kong; Pearl River Delta, China)
• Forest fires and deforestation (Indonesia)

The plan should provide regular communications that are credible and use multiple vehicles and channels, such as face-to-face meetings, intranet building on social media concepts, feedback loops, competitions etc.

Create fun campaigns at work to draw attention to good practices to reduce employees’ impact on the environment.

For example:

• Cool Down Friday: turning down heating/air conditioning (depending on the country) on Fridays. Let employees know they will feel slightly warmer/cooler than usual and why. Support with fun activities, e.g. accompany with dress down days, and produce T-shirts with Cool Down Friday

• Think about linking communications or activities to key dates. For example, World Water Day (22 March 2008); World Environment Day (5 June 2008)

However, also make it easy for employees to understand the impact of what they do on the environment and how they can make some simple behavioural changes. There are lots of materials and data around. In the office, simple techniques include:

• Turning off computers, printers and photocopiers at the end of the day
• Switching off monitors when away from your desk
• Turning lights off when leaving the office at night or an empty room
• Switching off laptop and mobile phone chargers – they use power even when the device to be recharged is not attached

Remind your employees of the three ‘Rs’ – reduce, reuse and recycle

To reduce the amount of waste generated in the workplace:

• Paper: print less; print and photocopy double-sided; encourage paperless meetings by taking lap tops to meetings, and circulate agenda by email etc
• Emails: try not to print them
• Plastic cups – use glasses and mugs instead
• Junk mail – remove yourself from unwanted mailing lists

Re-use materials:

• Re-use scrap paper as note pads
• Re-use envelopes for sending internal documents
• Place a box beside photocopiers, fax machines and printers to collect paper used on one side that is not wanted or ‘mistakes’

Recycling:

• Make all employees aware of what they can recycle. Provide recycling facilities / bins for papers, drinks cans, food, plastics cups and bottles
• Remove personal bins and encourage staff to take waste and recyclables to central bins in the office

Go beyond the workplace, get employees to think how they can make savings at home through adopting the right behaviours in addition to recycling:

• Switching TVs and PCs off; avoiding use of standby
• Switching to low energy light bulbs (and in the long-term they work out cheaper to use)
• Turning the tap off when brushing your teeth
• Insulating their homes

6.  Get your employees involved

One way to ensure change ‘sticks’ is to go beyond communications to getting employees actively involved in the issues. Develop a range of exciting opportunities where employees can learn and lend a hand at the same time.

For example:

• Encourage your employees to measure their carbon footprint by using one of the many online Carbon Calculators to measure footprint both at home and in the office

• Create days to promote people walking or cycling to work or switching to public transport or car sharing where more appropriate

• If you have an employee volunteering scheme, provide platforms of good quality employee volunteering opportunities with NGOs or bodies associated with environmental work. Such opportunities could include using core skills to add value to implementation of strategy or doing physical activity around environmental projects. Often these can provide great development opportunities for employees

• Carbon detectives: seek volunteers or champions to be Carbon Detectives (CDs). CDs are briefed to spot energy wasting practices at work. On a designated day, get CDs either to be the first to arrive or last to leave the office. CDs check all equipment (monitors, printers, photocopiers) and leave a reward or inflated balloon by any appliance that has been switched off overnight.

• Support with communications campaigns about energy (in)efficient practices. Repeat the ‘energy spot check’ exercise, say, two weeks later. Record the difference in behaviours. Let colleagues know the difference they have made - congratulate them and celebrate the results to reinforce energy saving behaviours

• Encourage the set up of departmental or country Environment Committees. Get employees who are interested to take a lead and to develop and promote more great practices.

7. Recognise and reinforce the right behaviours

People tend to do more of what gets positively reinforces, so find some great ways to recognise employees who have led the way on environmental issues in the company.

As you develop your approach you may want to think about how you ‘hard wire’ environment into performance objectives. To start, this may be your senior management team only, for example, by getting them to agree reduction targets for the company for energy, water, air travel and waste of 10-20% in absolute or per employee terms.  Later, it could be rewarding incremental revenue from ‘green’ products to business teams.

8. Embedding as a way of doing business

Real behaviour change will only be durable if there are systems and processes in place to help support it – so identify ways to embed your strategy. Examine key practices and policies to ensure they are aligned to your ‘green’ change goals.

For example:

• Engage your property/ facilities management team to look at ways to reduce energy. For example, smart light metre systems, turning heating systems down etc. and making it easier for employees to get to work under ‘their own steam’ by providing showers and cycle racks

• Talk to your technology department about reconfiguration of printers or purchasing of duplex printers. For example, switch printers to a default of setting of double-sided and black and white printing to save paper and costs

• Align your people processes. Communicate your environment strategy as part of your recruitment and induction process. Embed in management development, employee volunteering and performance/ reward processes as relevant

• Purchasing have a key part to play through supply chain management and knowing the ‘green’ credentials of suppliers. Change purchasing policy to the use of recycled paper and/or paper from sustainable sources to reinforce the message (be careful though – it can be more expensive!)

9. Measuring change and impact

Always the most difficult aspect of a change programme, but a critical one. Agree success measures up front based on the business case for your chosen strategy and/or your change programme and what the intended impact is.

Set up measurement systems to measure the impact of your change programmes.

For example:

• If the programme is to reduce your company’s environmental impact, establish a base line of annual energy, water and paper usage and air travel

• Agree achievable reduction targets, say 10-20% in total terms or average per employees

• Measure progress against targets at regular intervals, say every six months

• Quantify both the reduction in consumption but also the cost savings

• Alternatively, measure employees’ awareness of environmental issues and the extent to which they are motivated to change behaviours by using existing employee surveys

10. Keep yourself up-to-date

Hardly a day goes by without an article in the national press about environmental and climate change. The pace of change is phenomenal too in what is happening in the world and how governments, NGOS and companies are responding. Knowledge gets outdated quickly. Many companies offer free seminars on ‘green’ issues and there is lots of materials on the website. Make sure you keep up-to-date.

For a robust grounding in the issues and impacts of climate change, make sure you are familiar with The Stern Review Report on The Economics of Climate Change  and John Lllewellyn’s The Business of Climate Change (Lehman Brothers).

ABOUT STANDARD CHARTERED

Standard Chartered is listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and is consistently ranked in the top 25 among FTSE-100 companies by market capitalisation.

Standard Chartered has a history of over 150 years in banking and operates in many of the world’s fastest growing markets with an extensive global network of over 1,400 branches (including subsidiaries, associates and joint ventures) in over 50 countries in the Asia Pacific region, South Asia, the Middle East, Africa, the Untied Kingdom and the Americas.

As one of the world’s most international banks, Standard Chartered employs almost 70,000 people, representing over 100 nationalities, worldwide. Standard Chartered derives over 90% of profits from Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Serving both consumer and wholesale banking customers worldwide, the bank combines deep local knowledge with global capability to offer a wide range of innovative products and services as well as award-winning solutions.

Standard Chartered takes a long term view of the consequences of its actions to ensure that the bank builds a sustainable business through social inclusion, environmental protection and good governance.


FOR MORE INFORMATION


Standard Chartered Bank
Contact: Debbie Whitaker, head of sustainability
T: +44(0)20 7457 5637
E: Debbie.Whitaker@standardchartered.com
www.standardchartered.com
www.standardchartered.com/sustainability/en/index.html