According to recent data, more than 8 in 10 employees around the world expect their company to take action on climate change. 

By 2025, 27% of the workforce will be Generation Z, and an accumulating set of data about Gen Z (the generation born between 1995 and 2010) has shown that this demographic is particularly concerned about sustainability issues. This isn’t just about Gen Z, though; employees of all ages care about their company’s position on climate change. As climate impacts around the world become more visible, enterprise sustainability will become an increasingly powerful differentiator for attracting and retaining top talent. Enterprises have an opportunity to think far beyond their annual sustainability report as they consider how to attract this sustainability-motivated talent. 

To weave sustainability across the end-to-end employee experience, enterprises can begin by ensuring that sustainability is embedded in their recruiting and hiring funnel. They can further double down on sustainability by enabling sustainable choices at work, and by amplifying employee voice. Finally, they can strengthen their commitment to sustainability by providing employees with learning and development opportunities that allow them to leverage sustainability technologies and sustainability best practices in their own roles and functions, and even build entire careers devoted to sustainability .    

Embedding Sustainability in Recruiting and Hiring

Sustainability is increasingly a make-or-break factor as employees around the globe vet prospective employers. According to one 2019 survey, a full 50% of UK workers between the ages of 23 and 38 said they would consider leaving their current job to work for a more environmentally friendly organization. Enterprises that introduce sustainability and impact early on in the recruiting process will be better positioned to engage with candidates around their preferences for how sustainability shows up in the workplace.

Sharing how an organization values sustainability is more complex than presenting a sustainability report or isolated success stories. Many prospective hires are already well-informed on sustainability. Some come to the table with understandable skepticism about the depth of an organization’s sustainability commitment, initiatives and track record. By preparing recruiters to have substantive conversations about sustainability, organizations can make a more thoughtful early impression with candidates. Organizations can build this knowledge by providing internal and external recruiters and hiring managers with training on the company’s sustainability and impact strategy, goals, and imperatives. This context will allow them to provide clear answers to candidates’ increasingly complicated sustainability questions.

In the wake of COVID-19, there is also a significant opportunity to lean into the sustainability benefits of remote recruiting. Organizations that leverage virtual recruiting can emphasize that their digital recruiting practices play a role in reducing their carbon footprint. Virtual meetings and no-paper contracts can be explicitly identified as sustainability-driven practices. 

Enabling Sustainable Choices at Work

Employee empowerment is fundamental to embedding sustainability in the employee experience. Designing sustainability into the employee experience — for example, when developing internal processes and policies (e.g., procurement, events, employee benefits), sustainability initiatives, and customer and product services — enables employees to create and “own” their sustainability journeys.

Designit, the design-led innovation firm of the Wipro ecosystem, recently teamed up with BMW to create and test a digital platform prototype that linked employee transportation choices to a point system focused on climate emissions, rewarding active and sustainable mobility choices. BMW partnered with brands like Adidas to further strengthen the incentive structure by allowing employees to trade points for prizes. The prototype proved so engaging to BMW employees that BMW took the platform to market as Moovster, a BMW spin-off that provides flexible transportation solutions and offers rewards for climate-positive mobility behaviors. 

While individual employees may have little influence over the outcomes of company-wide sustainability initiatives, such incentive-based programs provide employees with a powerful sense of having a personal stake in the company’s impact goals and outcomes. Wipro’s Talent and Change team often advocates for incentive-based programs, having found them much more effective than punitive measures or policies when it comes to motivating change. 

If articulated in the right way, climate impact itself can be a powerful incentive. For example, Wipro recently partnered with a large global energy company to host a four-day series of Microsoft Teams workshops in place of in-person gatherings. We estimated that the decision to work remotely saved 15,000 kilograms of CO₂— impressive, perhaps, but also rather abstract. To make the outcome more concrete, and further incentivize remote meetings where appropriate, we translated the outcome into a more user-friendly statistic: Virtual workshops saved the same amount of CO₂ as 500 trees would absorb during the same time period.  

Amplifying Employee Voice to Drive Change 

The employee voice is an important and all-too-often forgotten aspect of a company’s plan around climate change.

Employees are already taking advantage of new tools and data that are helping them effect change. Organizations like ClimateVoice are providing employees with powerful tools and strategic frameworks for influencing boards and leadership teams, while independent data and rating portals are giving employees insights into company sustainability performance. Given these trends, organizations are creating new ways for employees to more actively engage on climate change and other sustainability topics.

Sustainability advocacy/advisory groups, ambassador programs and change networks provide venues in which employees can express and hone their perspectives about sustainability and the organization’s position. Change networks can be particularly transformative. Building a change network involves identifying passionate internal change agents, equipping them with training and change management techniques, and empowering them to build networks that can scale throughout an organization. In parallel to these developments, an entire academic research stream on “sustainable human resources management” is bringing new insights into the interplay between employers and employees when it comes to sustainability issues. 

Advancing Learning and Career Development

Sustainability is becoming part of many jobs across industries. LinkedIn’s Global Green Skills Report 2022 finds that sustainability-related job postings jumped an average of 8% per year between 2015 and 2022. Yet, according to Microsoft’s 2022 Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap Report, 60% of sustainability hires lack expertise in their chosen field. Both academic and enterprise programs will gradually fill this gap and build the sustainability talent pipeline. Stanford University, for example, launched a new sustainability school enabled by a $1.1 billion gift — the university’s first new school in 70 years. 

As enterprise sustainability initiatives mature, so too are the approaches to training. New programs are focusing on complex issues like impact accounting, industry-specific assessment frameworks and emerging sustainable technologies. 

Employees in all functions, from HR to payroll to IT to marketing, will play a crucial role in scaling sustainable outcomes. Kite Insights — one of Wipro’s own sustainability L&D providers — points out that as much as 70% of the workforce now wants training on climate action at work. Sustainability L&D should be conceptualized as a strategic workforce transformation program. Creative approaches that emphasize continuous learning around sustainability will define the most future-ready workforces.  

In some cases, companies are already going even further: not just training all employees, but positioning sustainability as a KPI for everyone in the organization. MasterCard, for example, recently linked employee variable compensation to company-wide ESG goals.  

Putting it All Together: Tying Employee Experience to Sustainability Transformation

Putting employees in the driver’s seat of sustainability efforts is now a vital employee recruitment and retention strategy. To sustain such efforts, it will be crucial to connect employee-driven sustainability work with the company’s overall sustainability strategy. The more employees understand the organization’s broader sustainability ambitions, the more motivated they will be to drive greater impact. 

The end goal should be to create a virtuous cycle. Empowered employees will continuously improve the company’s sustainability outcomes. In turn, stakeholders from investors to customers to regulators will recognize those sustainability advances and support the company’s success. The cycle continues as the company’s success and reputation as a forward-thinking sustainability leader attracts and retains the brightest empowered talent.