The corporate responsibility ecosystem has evolved rapidly in recent years. Due to this, Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) measures are no longer just a nice-to-have for a business but must-haves to gain a competitive advantage.
An organization’s ESG strategy has become increasingly important for its financial performance and reputation, scrutinized heavily by stakeholders like investors, customers and rating agencies to measure its viability.
According to a recent survey by Korn Ferry, 95% of the most admired companies have connected their ESG initiatives to their broader purpose.
The most successful ESG initiatives encourage higher levels of engagement from stakeholders, especially employees. One of the top advantages of such engagement from employers is increased retention rates for top employees.
Modern-day employees are increasingly motivated to work for purpose-led organizations that reflect their values due to the COVID-19 epidemic and the growing demand for social justice.
Employing ESG practices that prioritize social and environmental good motivates employee loyalty, which boosts workplace achievement and productivity.
Recognizing that employee relationships—including interactions and connections with suppliers, customer service, and engagements with the local and global community—are fundamental to ESG profitability is important.
Employees are, therefore, the primary stakeholder for any organization from an ESG standpoint. In order to successfully manage ESG strategy and achieve ESG goals, businesses must actively engage with their workforce.
How businesses can engage in employees’ sustainability literacy?
ESG tactics support investor confidence and company resilience. Companies with well-established, robust ESG programmes performed better and attracted more investment during the COVID-19-related financial difficulties, which serves as evidence of this.
However, a company’s ESG strategy will perform poorly or prove unsustainable without the crucial elements of employee buy-in. Here are some of the top ways businesses can connect with their employees to achieve their ESG goals:
Create buy-in
Aside from the requirements for ESG reporting, businesses must promote buy-in for ESG through a strategic declaration of intent. ESG strategies cannot perform to their full potential and may yield a negligible to a negative return on investment without this buy-in.
Employees must understand how ESG strategies will benefit themselves and external stakeholders to prevent them from becoming a wasteful endeavor or a hollow ideal.
Collect employee feedback
Business owners should take employee input into account when developing their ESG strategy,
just like they would with other types of stakeholder engagement.
Employees will more readily assist businesses in navigating their strategy
when they feel a greater sense of ownership and investment in the initiatives, which will greatly impact
on the social and environmental levels.
Drive all-around behavioural change
When implementing a new value system, those in charge of the transformation must concentrate on developing the tools and training necessary to assist each individual in aligning with the desired way of thinking and working.
When establishing an ESG strategy, all levels of the organization must be held responsible for their contributions to advancing the strategy. These initiatives have little impact on employee satisfaction unless employees are informed and actively engaged in the process.
Connecting employee values to sustainability nurtures long-term success of the initiatives. For company-wide ESG initiatives to achieve explosive success, it is important to bridge the knowledge gap for those with little exposure to environmental issues today.
Recykal’s Evolv platform helps businesses assess their sustainable literacy and recommends measures to engage, enable and drive their employees to ensure that the business meets its ESG goals.
Visit Evolv today to know more and get started.
