Climate change could have a negative impact on organisations in the following ways:  

• Potential liability for emitting greenhouse gases.  
• Physical risks from extreme weather events globally.  
• Water scarcity.  
• Transition to new technologies, markets and regulation.  
• Increased health impacts and inequalities. 

Climate change could also benefit organisations:  

• Improvements in energy efficiency can lead to reduced costs.  
• Innovation can inspire new products and services that are less carbon-intensive or that enable carbon reduction elsewhere.  
• Enhancing supply chain resilience, for example by reducing reliance on price-volatile fossil fuels and moving to renewable energy. 

Climate change is transforming how consumers, employees and shareholders evaluate organisations and interact with them. Organisations need to measure their exposure to climate-related risks and subsequently manage them, and incorporate climate change in their strategic plans.   

A longer-term, strategic perspective on the risks and opportunities of climate change is rarely undertaken, even as part of a PESTLE analysis (external political, economic, social, technological, legal, environmental factors).  

Top tip: Assess the environmental impact of projects  

The management of projects should consider the financial, equality and environmental impacts. Evaluate the project’s potential effects on the environment and whether there are any risks from climate change. Examine these in the context of both carrying out the project and its outputs and outcomes.  

The following steps may help companies to get to grips with climate change:  

• Understand the risks climate change presents to the organisation, and the opportunities that may lie in becoming part of the solution.  
• Assess the scale of necessary emission reductions and the levers that are key to achieving them.  
• Calculate how much emission reduction and adaptation efforts will cost.  
• Position the risks and opportunities of climate change within the governance structure to ensure a strategic measurable approach.  

Top tip: Consider your organisation’s values, strategies and plans  

Check if your organisation has included sustainability in its overarching principles and translated these into actions. If not, can you influence those who implement the organisational strategies to incorporate relevant issues? You could also facilitate and role-model this through HR practices.  

HR practitioners are in a unique position due to their connections across their organisations, through their roles and the requirement to engage with all levels, disciplines and sectors. Every employee will have contact with aspects of HR throughout their employment through to the point at which they leave. 

• Net zero refers to achieving a balance between the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced and the amount removed from the atmosphere. There are two different routes to achieving net zero, which work in tandem: reducing existing emissions and actively removing greenhouse gases.
• Carbon neutral means eliminating carbon dioxide emissions altogether.

Addressing climate change and environmental sustainability is often seen as the domain of facilities management, the energy manager or procurement. However, HR can play a significant role in influencing an organisation to achieve the climate emergency targets set by national governments and international bodies. 

To help implement this agenda, we suggest HR evaluates what action the organisation is currently taking or has planned. Ask the following four questions: 

What environmental sustainability steps does your organisation already have in place? 

Look at what policies, procedures, values, awards and accreditation. Most organisations will have an environmental sustainability policy statement. This should explain clearly the organisation’s position, and be signed off by someone in a senior management role. It should be reviewed regularly and available to all employees and stakeholders. There may also be an environmental strategy to support the policy, setting out the organisation’s plans. 

The organisation may have awards and accreditations, such as an environmental management system, which can be used as reference points in your HR practices. There may be named responsibilities assigned to certain roles. It is possible that some of these can be shared, with further responsibilities allocated to, for example, all those in supervisory roles. Are there actions that are everyone’s responsibility? 

What does the organisation do well? How could environmental sustainability be integrated? 

All organisations will have their strengths, which you may already have discovered through a SWOT analysis (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) or through the discover phase of the 4D process of an appreciative inquiry analysis. Strengths may vary according to department or function. For example, the finance department may be good at innovative procurement and collaborating with other similar organisations to achieve savings, while production may have a great health and safety record. The organisation may have people with strong data analysis skills. Think about how these strengths can be used when integrating environmental sustainability. 

Where are the gaps that could be filled by HR? 

Just as inclusivity has become an expected part of the culture of organisations, so should environmental sustainability. Every action and decision taken in an organisation has an environmental impact. Through synthesising their existing connections and contacts, HR can encourage and enable a lens of sustainability for those taking those actions and making decisions. HR can also help embed environmental practices in its specialist areas, such as recruitment and performance management, as we outline in the following sections of this guide.

Which other parts of the organisation could HR work with to achieve its environmental sustainability strategy and plans? 

Facilities management traditionally drives the environmental agenda, with an emphasis on technology and energy use. Finance and procurement might also apply criteria for purchases. The organisation may even have a dedicated sustainability team. 

If part of your organisation is working on environmental sustainability, it would welcome collaborative working to help it to achieve its aims and objectives. If no one in the organisation is working on this issue, HR can play a leading role in bringing everyone together to contribute in a collective and systematic manner. 

In the following sections, we suggest actions HR can take to embed environmental sustainability in the following specialist areas: recruitment and selection; performance and reward; learning and development; and leadership and engagement

There are several ways HR professionals can include environmental sustainability in the tools and techniques they use. 

Incorporate sustainability practices into job design 

Job descriptions could include role-specific tasks or responsibilities relating to an aspect of environmental sustainability. For example, this might include all managers having responsibility for regularly measuring and reporting on the resource use in their area and taking actions to increase efficiency and reduce consumption and waste. This requirement could be linked to departments’ financial performance and a requirement to demonstrate cost-effectiveness. 

Top tip: Incorporate green know-how into job descriptions 

As well as being used for recruitment and selection, job descriptions and person specifications enable employees and managers to understand what is required in any role. Reference could be made to environmental competencies, as well as explaining what the person’s responsibilities, authority and accountability are in terms of environmental sustainability.

Revisit your person specifications 

If job descriptions are to include environmental sustainability tasks or responsibilities, person specifications could similarly include a requirement to demonstrate knowledge relating to that responsibility. For example, the organisation may consider it desirable that all managers should have achieved a named climate literacy standard or equivalent.

Provide flexible work opportunities for employees 

The opportunity to work flexibly or remotely is not only a potentially attractive benefit to employees, but can also be beneficial in the following environmental terms:

• Less total commuting means reduced emissions from vehicles. 
• Travelling outside rush hour means shorter journey times and lower vehicle emissions. 
• Remote workers use fewer resources, such as paper and catered food. 
• Reduced energy use in the organisation’s premises – the energy used at home has been calculated to be less than that used in offices in terms of heating and equipment, and the additional reduction in travel emissions adds up to an overall reduction. 
• Individuals benefit from the cost savings of reduced travel.

Use green credentials as an attraction tool 

A study by PwC shows that job-seekers are attracted to organisations with sustainable practices along with social practices more generally, such as community involvement and ethical governance. Sustainable credentials help to make organisations especially attractive options, and that attraction is a source of competitive advantage.

Why jobseekers are attracted to sustainability

• Sustainability is a source of employee pride: Sustainability actions often raise a company’s reputation and status, leading many jobseekers to feel they would be proud to work for an organisation admired for its sustainability achievements. Reinforce that anticipated sense of pride by creating and celebrating a reputation for sustainability. You can demonstrate employee pride through testimonials and by showing how you celebrate sustainability achievements.

• Sustainability implies the company cares about its employees: To some jobseekers, sustainability initiatives suggest that the company genuinely cares about the wellbeing of society more generally, and therefore must treat its employees well. Reinforce the belief that the company cares about society and the planet and link this to your people practices. Be transparent about viewing sustainability as a source of competitive advantage through reduced energy costs, employee retention, brand management, and so on. People can react negatively unless they see motives beyond profit-seeking, so link your sustainable practices to social and environmental values as well. 

• Sustainability helps jobseekers connect specific organisational values to their own personal values: Job-seekers want an employer whose values are a good fit with their own. More than three decades of research shows that the match a person feels with an organisation is a major driver of job choice decisions. Linking your sustainability initiatives to specific organisational values will demonstrate their authenticity.

HR should consider the following: 

• Include details of specific environmental sustainability roles and responsibilities: Along with your organisation’s green achievements, accreditations and values, a further potential attraction to jobseekers is to include details of the specific sustainability roles and responsibilities there are in your jobs.

• Ensure your recruitment and selection methods are environmentally friendly: Consider whether the methods you use reflect the values and culture of your organisation. Using IT to reduce paperwork and travel are perhaps the most obvious environmentally preferable practices. Many recruitment activities are now frequently conducted electronically, such as advertising vacancies, receiving and distributing applications/CVs, reference checks, letters of offer and employment contracts. The need for in-person interviews is changing as technology allows for improved remote communication, reducing the need to travel. High-quality discussions can be conducted without the environmental (and financial) costs of travel. Many induction processes are online, web-based or otherwise electronically managed.

Performance management is the process of ensuring that a set of activities and outputs meets an organisation’s goals in an effective and efficient manner. It can focus on the performance of an organisation, a department, an employee or the processes in place to manage particular tasks.

Performance management covers activities that:

• Establish objectives through which individuals and teams can see their part in the organisation’s mission and environmental strategy. It is necessary to outline the role of each individual in the organisation in terms of functions and responsibilities to ensure that performance management is successful.

• Improve sustainability performance among employees, teams and, ultimately, organisations.

• Hold people to account for their performance by linking it to reward and career progression. 

Top tip: Incorporate environmental sustainability into the competency framework 

If the organisation has implemented a competency framework, it may already have included competencies relating to environmental sustainability. If not, consider introducing some into the competency framework. If the organisation does not have a framework in place, HR could still think about introducing sustainability competences into new and existing job descriptions.

For all employees, you could include a knowledge requirement relating to environmental sustainability, for example:

• Completion of the organisation’s Carbon Literate programme, or equivalent, and understanding of: 

1.  how climate here and elsewhere is likely to change
2. how changes in the climate are likely to affect us in our country and in other parts of the world
3.  the carbon costs of our work activities and how our actions impact on the amount of greenhouse gases produced
4. what can be done to reduce the environmental impact of work activities
5. where to go for more information and support. 

Competencies that define skills could be generic or role-specific. 
A generic example could be that all procurement decisions made consider the environmental impact of the action using the organisation’s impact assessment template.

• For sustainability-literate leaders you could add more specific knowledge. For example, leaders understand: 

Emerging environmental and social trends, the changing role of business in society and how peer organisations are responding.

1. Emerging environmental and social trends, the changing role of business in society and how peer organisations are responding.
2. The risks and opportunities these trends create for the organisation.
3. How to conduct environmental and social cost accounting, and use tools for scenario planning, back-casting and materiality analyses.

Developing competencies for all employees and those in leadership roles can inform other processes within the sphere of performance management. Many organisations will have some sort of appraisal or performance development process that could refer to competencies, either generic or specific to a role or function. Performance objectives should be agreed for individuals, departments and the organisation. These could be expressed as targets to be achieved, one-off tasks to be completed by specified dates or ongoing standards to be met. 

If your organisation has an environmental sustainability strategy and plan, this should express the direction the organisation wants to go, as well as setting specific objectives. For example, a net zero aim or a carbon neutral aim by a certain date would need to be translated into objectives that explain how this will be achieved. 
These organisational objectives need to be cascaded down through the organisation to all employees in order to be achieved.

For example, an organisational objective could be:

• Reduce energy use by 50% this year against the previous year. 
An individual objective relating to this could be: 
• Monitor energy use monthly and report figures quarterly to the management team. 
• Install LED lighting by the end of March and monitor the change in energy use. 
The individual concerned should participate in determining the best way to work towards achieving that 50% reduction in their part of the organisation and agree to their objectives. 

Top tip: Include sustainability objectives in performance management targets and goals

Specific individual and team objectives can be agreed around sustainability targets to help the organisation reach its objectives. Performance objectives could include one-off targets to be completed by specified dates or ongoing standards to be met.

Effective reward packages are aligned with the needs of the organisation and staff expectations for rewards. They should reflect the organisation’s values, purpose and performance. People are attracted, retained and engaged by a variety of financial and non-financial rewards, which can change over time depending on their personal circumstances. Be aware when designing rewards relating to environmental sustainability actions that whatever the reward is, it should align with the organisation’s espoused environmental values. For example, it would be inappropriate for a reward for improved performance to be a bigger car if the organisation is claiming to try to reduce its emissions from travel. Collaborative behaviour may be extremely important in your organisation, where different functions need to work together to achieve sustainability actions. Recognising where this is the case can be encouraged by team-based reward and backed up by individual reward and/or recognition. 
Carefully consider the role of financial as well as non-financial and intangible rewards (recognition, praise and awards), as each brings their own issues that need to be managed well if they are to meet the desire for attracting, retaining and engaging people.

Top tip: Align rewards and recognition with sustainability considerations 

Make sure that employee rewards have a positive environmental impact and that any recognition is aligned to the organisation’s values. Feedback and praise can have a greater effect on individuals’ self-esteem and engagement than extrinsic motivators. Are your pension fund investments in line with your organisation’s ethical and environmental standards? 

There are many factors to consider with your workplace pension scheme. In relation to sustainability, you should think about these factors:

• Is the pension free of investments in carbon-intensive sectors? Ensure your pension is not supporting industries that are significant contributors to climate change.

• How do you enable employees to better align their pension savings with their beliefs and increase positive social impact through their investment choices in workplace pension plans?

Having a scheme that supports the organisation’s corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability values and strategy ensures that there is alignment as well as enabling transparency about the provider and fund and where money is invested.

Induction is the process through which employees adjust or acclimatise to their new jobs and working environment. Every organisation, large or small, should have a well-considered induction plan that provides a new employee with a positive experience of the organisation. As part of this, ‘orientation’ can be used for a specific event that new starters attend, and ‘socialisation’ can describe the way in which new employees build working relationships within their new teams. Some people use the term ‘onboarding’ to cover the entire process, from an individual’s first contact with the organisation before they formally join, through to understanding the organisation’s ways of working and getting up to speed in their role.

Top tip: Discuss sustainability in the induction process 

This is often the employee’s first experience of socialisation in the organisation and where its values and culture can be established and encouraged. By explaining ‘how we do things here’, ‘what is important to us’, and ‘what we expect from you’, the induction process can reinforce how the organisation aims to achieve its sustainability targets. 

The impressions made when someone starts work for an organisation have a lasting impact on how they view their employer, so a welcoming and effective experience is key to making this first impression a positive one. At all points in the onboarding process there can be reference to the sustainability aspects of the organisation, such as their values, ambitions, culture and accreditations. Induction should cover relevant sustainability competencies and responsibilities and provide information specific to the role. 

Training for all employees could include some aspect of generic knowledge about the causes and impact of climate change and the relevance to the organisation and how it is responding. This would ensure that environmental sustainability is embedded into all job roles of an organisation.This could include aspects such as:

• Carbon foot printing.

• Reducing resource use, waste and travel.

• Policies for expenses and procurement.

Role-specific training could include support for managers and supervisors in understanding the strategic and operational implications that environmental sustainability has for them, their team and department. This will enable managers to contribute to the improved environmental sustainability of the organisation. It could also cover specific skills such as:

• Sustainability auditing and reporting.

• Applying a circular economy approach. A circular economy is a systemic approach to economic development designed to benefit businesses, society and the environment. It is regenerative by design and aims to gradually decouple growth from the consumption of finite resources. 

Just as equality, inclusion and diversity should be an integral element of all programmes, so should environmental sustainability. All topics covered in the organisation’s learning and development programmes should recognise where there is an environmental issue and where changes in the environment present risks or opportunities to the organisation. Case studies could be used in training, ensuring that they incorporate sustainability issues such as the environmental impact of behavioural choices. Through this integration, the culture of the organisation becomes normalised. 

The delivery of learning and development needs to keep up with changes across organisations, the expectations of employees and consideration of the skills needed for the future. Technological developments that have an impact on learning methods include: 

• Custom-made e-learning.

• Learning management systems.

• Electronic performance support systems. 

• Cloud-based file- and presentation-sharing applications.

• Virtual meetings.

There are opportunities to use more blended approaches and technology, which reduce the need to travel, such as live online delivery and social and collaborative learning through communities of practice. An example of this would be the formation of green teams to work on specific environmental issues, such as innovative ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions or task and finish groups to develop strategic responses to environmental legislation.

Leadership can be defined as the capacity to influence people to achieve a common goal, such as fulfilling the sustainability strategy for the organisation. In this context, leadership could be attached to a role and is often exercised by those in charge, but additionally all employees may be expected to demonstrate leadership qualities.

HR practitioners, with their key visibility in the organisation, can be significant sustainability role models, leading the way in achieving the organisation’s environmental strategy and signalling to all employees the importance of the issue of tackling climate change.

Top tip: Ensure that leaders display environmental behaviours 

The commitment of the senior leaders in your organisation to environmental sustainability is vital to tackling the climate emergency, recognising the role that businesses have and the influence of leaders to the organisation and its employees. Senior management, including senior HR professionals, must be supportive of environmental initiatives. Leaders must be seen to be green if they are to encourage employees to be green too. HR can be the exemplar for this and encourage and enable people throughout the organisation to participate in environmental behaviours and initiatives.

HR professionals should be part of the senior team and can play a key role in developing the knowledge, skills and capability of the whole team to enable it to put together a comprehensive sustainability strategy and implement it across the organisation.  People are currently looking more for evidence of ethical leadership at the top and throughout the organisation. They are seeking ‘ethical alignment’ with leaders who demonstrate ethical behaviour and decision-making that aligns with their own values and with those of the organisation. The perceptions employees have of their leaders’ ethical behaviour suggest that leaders’ moral character makes a difference to employee outcomes such as job satisfaction. 

It should be transparent to all where the accountability for the organisation’s environmental performance lies. If the performance management system is working correctly, it should be clear not only who within the organisation has responsibility to carry out tasks, but also who has the authority to make decisions – and ultimately who is accountable. Leaders will reliably deliver on their commitments, showing others they can be trusted to do what they say they will do.

Include environmental aspects in the organisational values

HR can ensure that accountability is built into job descriptions, strategy, business plans and projects so that achievements can be celebrated and acknowledged appropriately. The organisation’s values should drive action. Not only can HR facilitate the development of organisational values, but it can also ensure that these are embedded in all of their policies, procedures and practices.

Environmental sustainability can be used as a workforce engagement method. An employee engagement strategy might focus on:

• Motivation: how workers guide their efforts to achieve sustainability goals, including intrinsic motivation (enjoying doing this work for its own sake) and extrinsic motivation (working to get a reward).

• Organisational identification: the alignment between how someone sees themselves and how they see their organisation. This is consistent with the alignment of personal and organisational values.

• Organisational commitment: feeling attached to the organisation and dedicated to their work. This would be the result of sustainability actions and their achievement – seeing success against objectives.

Working towards environmental sustainability objectives and translating these into tasks and activities can be the catalyst for workforce engagement. This process of engagement can be built around the MacLeod (2009) review of the four key ‘enablers’ of employee engagement.

This guide was written by Dr Jan Maskell CPsychol MCIPD