Sustainability goals
Our HR Lunchtime Debate questioned how businesses
can become more sustainable and what HR’s role
should be in creating the change. By EMMA GREEDY
carbon neutral – though she admits
that on the surface this target seems to
jar with the company’s purpose of
running fleets of cars.
“Our focus is all about getting
people out of higher-emitting
vehicles and into low-emission
vehicles, so that we can enable them to
make a significant impact on reducing
their company’s carbon emissions,”
she said.
While government incentives have
helped to push the sustainability
agenda Argall said that 2020’s Road to
Zero Strategy is what has made
businesses more aware of their
sustainability options.
“We are starting to see what is really
going to help businesses and get them
to recognise how they can make quick
wins and a significant reduction in
carbon emissions,” she said.
A top-down approach
A 2020 Purpose Pulse survey found
that climate change was the top
concern for employees aged 16 to 39
when it comes to choosing which
companies to work for.
While the appetite for change
is there, would employees feel
comfortable asking their employers
to make more of an effort to become
sustainable?
Surprisingly, almost half of our
webinar audience (44%) said
that they would feel comfortable
going to the C-suite and requesting
they make more environmentallyfriendly
decisions.
However, 34% said that their
employer would take some
convincing to take up the more
environmentally-friendly request.
Now there is a focus on
sustainability within almost every
business the real question is about
what it will cost.
“At Tusker we’ve found, across
various implementations, that refusal
to change to more sustainable options
may still be due to misconception of
price,” said Argall.
To make employers and decisionmakers
in a business understand that
up-front costs will be worth it in the
long run Gaskell said they will
unfortunately need a “shove” in a
more sustainable direction.
“The majority of any leadership
team or board are persuadable,”
he said.“You can persuade people
rationally if it’s a really good
business case, but also you can
persuade them emotionally.”
As an example Gaskell referred to a
person he knows that sits on the
executive board of a company.
Though this person reportedly
doesn’t “care about climate change” he
has children who do.
Strategic HR Sustainability webinar
For our panellists Harry
Gaskell, chief innovation
officer for the UK and Ireland at
EY, and Alison Argall, business
development director at Tusker,
carbon emissions currently pose the
biggest obstacle to sustainability in
both of their businesses.
Yet 12% of the webinar audience
said they had received no guidance
from their businesses on how to
reduce carbon impact.
Though some valuable
contributions were made by
businesses, (36% of the audience said
they had received recycling guidance
and 17% had been briefed on food
waste) the experts from HR’s
Lunchtime Debate argued that the
sector should be doing more to help
businesses become more sustainable.
Gaskell was disappointed by the
poll results as he said the most popular
measures taken are two of the easiest
things businesses can implement. He
argued that larger efforts, like electric
vehicles, are needed.
“It would be really good to see
employers start to give electric cars
a push as a lot of the cars on the
road are from company car fleets,”
he suggested.
Within EY Gaskell added that air
miles are the biggest culprit for
creating carbon emissions as
employees frequently fly to help their
clients in person.
“Eighty per cent of our carbon
budget is used to fly, so we need to
find a way of talking to our clients
more via the internet rather than
getting on the plane to go and see
them,” he said.
Because Tusker is a relatively small
business Argall said that it has been
able to concentrate on becoming
You can
persuade
people
rationally
if it’s a
really good
business
case
Watch the
video now
A recording of the
webinar is available at
bit.ly/SustainableHR
for those who missed
the live event
36 HR April 2020 hrmagazine.co.uk
/hrmagazine.co.uk