Embedding sustainability in your organisation’s culture
The missing metric
At Realise Earth we’ve always been focused on helping sustainability leaders build support for, and catalyse action on, sustainability across their organisation. But when it comes to embedding sustainability in your organisation’s culture, how exactly do you go about it?
To answer this question, we’ve partnered with the Most Sustainable Workplace Index (MSWI), which can help you do just that.
I recently sat down with Jaime Blakeley-Glover, creator of the Index, to hear his story. Listen to learn:
- Why Jaime believed the Index needed to exist
- The challenges Jaime faced developing the Index and how he overcame them
- The importance of seriously shifting the culture in organisations
Whether or not the Index is relevant to you and your work, in itself this a fascinating story of sustainability leadership.
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Why the Index?
Jaime explains the origins of the MSWI, recounting his early experiences in sustainable development and the pivotal moment when he recognised the crucial role of cultural sustainability within organisations.
I was working for the Sustainable Development Commission probably back in 2009, 2010. I was working with some climate psychologists, which just completely blew my mind, that there was even such a thing.
The index emerged as a response to the need for a comprehensive framework that prioritises the cultural conditions that drive meaningful organisational change.
Listen to Jaime’s story of creating a framework that enables you to embed sustainability in your organisation’s culture…
The challenges
The development of the MSWI was marked by challenges that tested Jaime’s persistence and creativity. From defining the Index’s parameters to crafting effective communication strategies, Jaime faced a variety of obstacles. Advice and support from others, and drawing on academic research on motivation and organisational change, enabled him to overcome them.
The first bit of the journey really was saying, “Well, actually, what do we need to measure?”
Then how you take the multitude of ways that people relate to sustainability in different terminology, and simplify that to create a set of questions that can be universally understood – whether you’re thinking about it in terms of net zero or circular economy or any of these things are out there at the moment.
How do you embed sustainability in your organisation’s culture?
A vision of transparency, employee engagement, and continuous improvement emerges. The index aims to develop a sustainability culture within organisations that enables and empowers employees to take action in line with their concerns about climate and sustainability.
And what I kept seeing within organizations was central sustainability teams were frustrated because they were trying to engage people and not much was changing.
So I felt there’s a real need to go okay, well, how do you take some of the learnings from that research project around the real importance of motivation, then thinking about, how do we really support sustainability teams to unlock that frustration?
The missing metric
With plans to expand into various sectors and strengthen partnerships, Jaime envisions a future where the MSWI put organisational sustainability culture at the heart of corporate sustainability reporting.
What I’ve been really seeing over the last 10, 15 years, we have a lot of focus on the technical side of sustainability. And it always felt like the people cultural bit was almost a bit of an afterthought in some ways.
The power of collaboration
The journey of developing the Most Sustainable Workplace Index showcases the power of collaboration, innovation, and a steadfast commitment to sustainability.
You need friends who you can call on, who’ve been marketing directors, and you can say, “I’m really struggling. Can you really help me just work out our messaging? “
And then you need your mate who’s going to really challenge you and go, “look, Jaimie, look, is there something really in this? How are you going to be really brave about it? How are you going to really try and turn this into something that…” and challenge the scope of your own thinking.
Worthwhile conversations
Our sustainability netwalks bring together sustainability leaders and pioneers to share practical experience; spark new ideas and explore the (often unspoken) challenges.
Transforming sustainability practice
Jaime’s vision for a more transparent, engaged, and sustainable workplace sets the stage for a transformative shift in organisational sustainability practices.
I really hope is it doesn’t become a tick box exercise. There’s some amazing movements out there, some great stuff coming out of the B Corp movement and things like that.
But equally I speak to companies who have done their B Corp and they’ve done nothing for the next two and a half years until it’s time to re accredit.
And I think I’d really hate for it to become something that is just that tick box exercise and someone goes, “yeah we’ve done that”.
