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How to engage employees for ESG goals
In this episode of Sustainability Matters podcast, WeSpire Founder Susan Hunt Stevens shares best practices in achieving a company’s ESG goals.
Related topics
The adoption of the UN Sustainable Development Goals in 2015 sparked a new integration of social impact and wellbeing with environmental performance. Previously distinct challenges were seen to be related, and organizations found themselves with interconnected issues, goals and opportunities.
WeSpire, an employee engagement technology company, developed a platform, content and community that companies use to activate the strengths of their workforce to navigate this new landscape. By engaging employees effectively, businesses can leverage their entire organization for ESG performance while increasing employee morale.
EY’s Chris Hagler chats with WeSpire Founder and CEO Susan Hunt Stevens to discuss how organizations can accelerate progress towards their ESG goals, improve company culture and stimulate innovation, all by activating and enabling their workforce.
Key takeaways include:
- Leverage existing communication channels to provide content and gather information and use the power of recognition to get people involved.
- Start by building up the knowledge base of your employees. When you increase the ESG IQ of your employees, you can inspire them to think about how the organization can operate more efficiently, which spurs business innovation, as well as builds workforce morale.
- The key to inclusive cultures is psychological safety. Inclusive cultures are more innovative cultures because people are more comfortable taking risks. A creative and innovative workforce can be a large factor in a company’s ability to hit audacious ESG goals.
- There are many ways to develop content for your employee engagement program. Strategically align the activities with your ESG goals and leverage what others have done to customize programs for your organization.
For your convenience, full text transcript of this podcast is also available.
Welcome to Sustainability Matters, a podcast series of EY. My name is Chris Hagler. I’m one of the leaders in our Climate Change and Sustainability Practice and your host for this series. We designed this podcast series to provide leading trends and practical advice around the environmental, social and governance, or ESG, issues and opportunities facing businesses today.
Today, we are going to focus on how companies can activate their ESG strategies — specifically, how they can activate their strategies through their employees. You’ve heard it before. Our employees are our greatest asset, and the SEC recently has recognized that by releasing a new requirement for human capital disclosures, saying that people are indeed material for driving business value. But ESG leaders have known for a long time that people are the key to successful ESG programs. I regularly gather a group of ESG leaders in Atlanta to share ideas and experiences. And no matter what topic we talk about, whether it’s climate change or investor relations or social impact, the conversation always turns to employee engagement. How do you enable employees, how do you engage them, and then how do you measure the results of that? Today, I’m speaking with Susan Hunt Sevens. She’s the CEO of WeSpire, a company that provides an employee experience technology platform. But I’m going to let her tell you more about that and her company. Welcome, Susan.
A few months later, I quit my job and embarked on this idea of being able to build an app that would motivate and inspire people to be healthier and more sustainable. Well, I never expected that we would end up running sustainability programs for some of the world’s largest companies and their employees. What we’ve learned in that time is that employees really do, as you said at the top the show, want to be engaged on these issues in a very significant way. What’s exciting is when you engage employees in these programs, not only do you achieve outcomes in your sustainability and ESG goals, but you also can transform your engagement rates, your intention rates and drive very significant improvements in your business. The win-win of sustainability has been really exciting to be a part of.
If you think back to 2015, that was prior to the advent of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDG, prior to, in many ways, the momentum around purpose led businesses. We really felt like that was the tipping point where people started to realize what we were doing had the potential to be really big. And so, it was just awesome to get that honor.
What we started to see was that there was this integration to start with, and in some cases consolidation between these teams that had been very, very siloed, and so, the sustainability team might have been part of supply chain, the well-being team was part of HR, the social impact team, this might have been part of the foundation and operating very separately or under a head of social responsibility. But those teams were not necessarily connecting. Then when the UN SDGs began to include not just well-being, sustainability and social impact topics but also equity and inclusion, the D&I piece started to come in as well. And we started to see people begin to think very differently.
The first thing that happened were some of the companies that we were working with and the person we were working with had a new role over some, if not, in some cases all of these areas. And as a result, they looked at us and said, “Hey, it’s great that you’re running all our employee engagement programs tied to environment, but I’d really like you to also be supporting social impact and also supporting D&I and also supporting well-being.” We had to step back as a company and say, do we think we could tackle this? And the exciting part for us is when we had approached this whole entire problem to start with, we saw it as a behavioral problem. We saw that what folks needed was a platform to motivate and inspire behavior change. When we designed it, it really was from a platform approach, a behavior change model that was then being applied to environmental activities and action.
It actually wasn’t as big a leap as it sounds for us to go from supporting environmental programs to supporting these other programs because, ultimately, they’re all about behavior. It’s all about, what do I want my employees to do as part of a social impact program? What do I want them to do as part of a well-being program, and what do I want them to do as part of diversity and inclusion program? As long as you know what it is that you want your employees to be doing and why, a behavior change platform can deliver on that. It took us a couple years of test and learn, but in 2018, we started to launch the other modules, complementing our sustainability module. We started with, at late 2017, social impact and supporting volunteering. Then we launched well-being, then we launched diversity, equity and inclusion, what we call inclusive culture.
In 2019, the final piece of the puzzle landed when we began to be able to support the giving and matching and philanthropy sides of these ESG initiatives. Some of our clients are using it to run all of their programs in a very integrated way. Some still are using one program, but the trend is certainly to see these ESG initiatives as an integrated engagement strategy that is not only driving your ESG goals and outcomes, but also your HR goals and outcomes.
You might be looking for sources of use in copiers or plug loads at desks, and how people are using charging. You might be looking at computer settings, you might be looking in certain workplaces at equipment, and how equipment is being used. And as you are participating in this, you’re taking actions: you can upload photos, you can share stories, you can like, you can comment. That will run for, let’s say it’s a 30-day challenge, and the winners will be declared based on whatever the conditions for victory were. It might be the team that had the most participants, it might be the team that took the most activities, it might be the team that drove the most impact. And then you’re getting digital achievements and kudos for having been a member of the vampire energy scavenger hunt.
If you are a winner of the vampire energy scavenger hunt., those achievements may or may not tie into recognition and rewards. We certainly emphasize recognition as the most powerful thing to give people to acknowledge the contribution that they’ve made, to show them the impact they are making. But we have some clients who would then link this into various different rewards. We even have clients who are starting to link it into their overall compensation with a target bonus, so things like that. We certainly think that’s pretty exciting, but it’s still our most forward-thinking clients are integrating this into compensation, but most people are doing recognition and/or some form of light rewards tied into participation.
If it’s a volunteering event, like a big day of service, you’re logging in and you’re seeing all the different volunteer opportunities that you could enroll and participate in. If it’s a well-being challenge, it might be a walk around the world in all the different offices, and you’re tracking steps and seeing different things or signing up for flu clinics or flu shots. In an inclusive culture, it’s where people are participating in all the different activities that employee resource groups might be running. It could be a guest speaker, it could be a meeting that they’re holding, it could be a campaign they’re running to build awareness around veterans issues, for example, and get people to really understand the types of issues that veterans face and be able to not only learn more about how they can support veterans in the workplace but take actions and behaviors that do support veterans in the workplace. There may be specific tie-ins between social impact and the employee resource groups.
This is where all that activity is getting designed and published, and it’s also where you’re getting all the metrics of how many people are participating how many hours were donated or dollars were given or energy was saved. How did it improve psychological safety levels in the workplace? Which is one of the ways that we measure inclusive culture. How did it improve retention? Because we can look at how employees are participating in these programs and then see whether there are retention changes — six months later, 12 months later — of employees. You’re getting the three core components, is you’re designing all these programs to the platform and pushing out to existing comms channels. You’re tracking all the things that people are doing, and then you’re measuring the impact that all that activity is having on business outcomes.
And then in terms of the content itself, it can come from several places, but one of the things we’re proudest of is our Behavioral Programs Library. We’ve actually won an Edison Award for innovation around this. Because what it does is it allows people to use our tools to build a behavior-based engagement program without having to understand behavior design. Think of it as, we may make photo books for Christmas that are beautiful photo books, but we never went to graphic design school, because there’s these websites that are basically helping us be graphic designers. We do the same thing for behavior design. When a client develops a program, and that program is really successful, they’re given the choice to keep it private or to share it into the library. We have over 400 programs in our library today that have been designed in partnership with clients and then shared. These are battle-tested, proven programs to drive impact and engagement. We really benefit from the wisdom of our network in being able to do this.
From time to time, our network will say, hey, I don’t see something in the library about implicit bias and we’re really needing to tackle implicit bias in the workplace. It’s something that we really recognize we need to do more from a behavior standpoint around. We will then go out and look for a content partner, an expert in that area, and work with them to design programs for that client. That client will run those programs; if they’re successful, share those back into the library with other clients. It’s been exciting to see this whole network effect of the WeSpire community really driving innovation and making it easier for customers to really figure out what kinds of activities they may want to do with each other. And they share regularly and quarterly calls, what kinds of things they’re doing. It’s another benefit of being part of a community of people all trying to achieve the same thing, which is getting their employees engaged in their ESG strategies.
We had everything from social distancing 101 to healthy habits, to engaging kids at home, managing stress and anxiety, everything that they needed to get the information out and get the employees doing the things they need them to do to keep themselves safe. And, of course, are now seeing, in some cases some programs around safe return to work, and things like that. That was big for everybody.
The second thing that happened right after they were getting folks kind of settled and engaged in COVID-related programs were obviously everything related to racial justice and equity. We saw clients really recognizing, wow, we’ve got to engage our employees in these courageous conversations that need to take place around racial justice and equity, and how and what do we want to engage employees in. What we saw was a burst of activity first and foremost in the area of supporting organizations, so we were running a lot of campaigns that were driving donations and matches and things like that into racial justice and equity organizations. But now what we’ve seen is really people wanting to emphasize inclusivity and how you can bring people together, how you build more awareness of equity and justice issues. And we’ve even seen those clients who still lean a little bit more heavily towards sustainability, and may not even actively have inclusive culture yet, be looking at this climate and equity connection. We’ve seen a lot of innovation and campaigns and programs to raise awareness around climate justice and equity and as part of their sustainability initiatives. So, from figuring out activities to do digital earth days to virtual volunteering, and we partnered with organizations that enable some really, really cool virtual volunteering opportunities to then all the work both on the behavioral front and the community support front around justice and equity.
It’s been a really, really busy year for us. (Laughs) The fact that we had something that was at the right place and the right time to help companies who were really struggling with how do I reach all of my employees when they’re at home, and how do I get them engaged in these issues that are just so important right now to society and to us as a forward-thinking workplace? To be able to offer things that have been a solution to that problem is probably one of the proudest moments in my career.
The next topic is okay, what can you do about it and what are some actions you can take in this area. There can be activities that are related to volunteering on climate justice issues. There can be organizations that benefit from donations and matches that companies are encouraging to climate justice-based organizations. And then there are certain activities that you can be directed to, everything from fun assessments that kind of test your climate equity IQ and things like that, and to really build the awareness around this. The third is encouraging others to learn. There’s usually activities in the campaign that will be about storytelling and sharing your story around this. Sharing an example of an organization that’s doing really good work in your community around climate justice, and that encourages the storytelling aspect. The goal of getting people participating in the campaign is to really raise, first and foremost, the awareness levels of the workforce around these topics and then to capture activities that are going to be beneficial activities in this area. We’ll even see that morph into idea boards where companies, employees who have gone through these campaigns, can now suggest ideas about what the company can be doing to be more sensitive to climate equity and climate justice.
That’s where you start seeing we should be looking things ideas and suggestions like when we’re making decisions about where we put data centers, we should be looking at climate justice is one of the criteria for site decisions. When you start getting employees looking at the company operations, who they partner with, where they put things, who their suppliers are, things like that, that’s when you really start to see the innovation that can come from this awareness building, and we’ve seen that all along is that when you give people a new set of glasses on how to look at the world through a sustainability lens, or a social impact lens, or an inclusivity or a health lens, the first thing that happens is they start to change how they’re behaving.
The second thing is they start to realize, wow, there’s all these other things that we could do, as a company, that’s going to make us more competitive, more inclusive, more of a force for good in this world. And that is one of the most powerful pieces of these programs, is when you not only are increasing the overall ESG IQ of your employees, but you’re really getting employees now to think about how should we, as a company, be operating differently and better in this world, both from a inspire companies to build a better working world but also from a higher performing company as a result.
I’ve seen clients who had a waste problem, for example, and run innovation challenges and create a business not only to handle the recycling of their own waste product that they couldn’t figure out how to recycle, but now realized if we couldn’t figure out how to do it, there’s thousands of other businesses that are struggling with this who are also wanting to recycle this, and we may be able to build a business if we offer this as a service. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it very, very successfully. And that’s, to me, the most exciting piece of the ESG puzzle, is that when we go from let’s raise the ESG IQ of our entire workforce, as a result, our workforce is more engaged, they want to work here more, they’re prouder of us, they’re telling our customers all about this. They’re figuring out with that lens, how we can reduce costs in our workplace, how we can build or grow revenues and new customer segments, and new lines of business with that lens as well.
And that’s just the most exciting part of ESG innovation and, of course, when your employees can be the greatest source of that innovation. And so what we tend to see is that step one is get everybody understanding what ESG actually is and what you as an employee can do at work and at home to have an impact. And then once you start doing those things, now you see the world through a different lens and can begin to make suggestions and ideas and do things that really, really transform some of the business opportunities that you have.
We’ve been able to demonstrate that participation in the ESG activities can drive 10 percentage point improvements in engagement, in some segments of high turnover employees, 37 percentage point improvements in retention. That is mind-blowing to people. And that really changes the conversation from ESG activities being the right thing to do to ESG activities being the smart thing to do.
The second thing is that the acknowledgement that being a purpose-driven business is what every business should be doing, is becoming more and more accepted. Whether it is the letter that’s coming from Larry Fink at BlackRock or if it is Jamie Dimon and the statement from the Business Roundtable, I think every company is recognizing that they need to have an important purpose that has a positive impact on society in addition to profit. You can say you have a purpose, but if you aren’t engaging employees in that purpose and providing a way for them to activate around that purpose, it ends up being words on a web page or in an annual report and not something that’s really deep and meaningful and real to your culture. A lot of people are going through a purpose journey to really articulate what is our purpose in addition to profit. But then, how do we bring that to life?
That is where I see this just huge overlap between ESG and purpose. For many companies, what they’ve really started to acknowledge is that within the ESG framework where can their purpose really shine. Then, of course, how do we get our employees really aligned and activated around where our purpose can shine through in the ESG lens? That trend is also accelerating and is really the top-of-mind conversation. Now, some companies still have to really do the materiality assessment from an ESG standpoint, like what are the really material factors that we need to be thinking about from an ESG standpoint. And I know you all and others do great work on that front, and we’re thrilled when we know that somebody has done that because then those materiality factors can help guide their purpose, but also guide what engagement programs to emphasize.
We love it when somebody has really articulated their purpose then really done an ESG materiality assessment to understand where their biggest opportunities and risks are. We can come in and really help them put together the employee engagement strategy around that purpose and those ESG targets and goals.
What’s been fascinating is, as we have worked with some very large organizations to help them answer that question of how psychologically safe is their organization and where are their strengths and where are their weaknesses, one of the things we often see is that the place they’re weak is in this area of willingness to take risks.
If you are the head of sustainability, you have to have a company and a culture that’s willing to take risks. By having and emphasizing the importance of agility and innovation and risk taking as part of psychological safety, you can benefit from the things you’re going to be able to do from a sustainability front. And obviously, in an ESG framework, those two areas, inclusivity and sustainability, are connected. There is a huge opportunity for inclusivity and sustainability to really lock-step in this whole idea of building a psychologically safe culture, that is a place where not only can people thrive who, for whatever reason, may be a minority in that culture, but it also is a way to really hone on the ability of the organization to take these risks that we’re going to need to take to hit audacious 2030 and beyond goals.
If you’re struggling with getting your company to do the things you need to do to hit big goals, often that’s because it’s a risk adverse culture. By teaming up with your inclusivity colleagues and building psychological safety, you can really tackle that. Those two teams working together could be one of the most powerful trends for this next decade.
If you would like to know more about Susan Hunt Stevens and WeSpire, please check them out at www.WeSpire.com. You can follow them on Twitter as well @goWeSpire and you follow Susan @huntstevens. Please follow me @chrishagler and EY Sustainable Impact Hub @EY_Sustainable and please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.
Today, we are going to focus on how companies can activate their ESG strategies — specifically, how they can activate their strategies through their employees. You’ve heard it before. Our employees are our greatest asset, and the SEC recently has recognized that by releasing a new requirement for human capital disclosures, saying that people are indeed material for driving business value. But ESG leaders have known for a long time that people are the key to successful ESG programs. I regularly gather a group of ESG leaders in Atlanta to share ideas and experiences. And no matter what topic we talk about, whether it’s climate change or investor relations or social impact, the conversation always turns to employee engagement. How do you enable employees, how do you engage them, and then how do you measure the results of that? Today, I’m speaking with Susan Hunt Sevens. She’s the CEO of WeSpire, a company that provides an employee experience technology platform. But I’m going to let her tell you more about that and her company. Welcome, Susan.
Susan Hunt Stevens
Chris, it’s great to be here. Thank you so much for having me.Chris Hagler
Let’s start with a little bit about your background, Susan, and talk to us about WeSpire and the product that you have.Hunt Stevens
I’ve spent 20 years in digital media and technology, and what I realized in the late 2000s is there were really powerful things happening in technology — game mechanics, social networks and social mechanics, personalization and mobile. These were being harnessed in a lot of different technologies to help people lose weight, be more fit. My passion, personally, was sustainability. I was going through a lifestyle journey myself of being more sustainable and helping save energy, wastewater, and fuel. At home, change how we were eating with more consciousness toward the environment, and thought, wow, I wish I had an app that could actually help around this. I went back to grad school at night in sustainable design at the Boston Architectural College and had that entrepreneurial a-ha moment where, in studying the LEED system for green building, I thought, well there’s the framework for what you could do. Why isn’t there a LEED for people?A few months later, I quit my job and embarked on this idea of being able to build an app that would motivate and inspire people to be healthier and more sustainable. Well, I never expected that we would end up running sustainability programs for some of the world’s largest companies and their employees. What we’ve learned in that time is that employees really do, as you said at the top the show, want to be engaged on these issues in a very significant way. What’s exciting is when you engage employees in these programs, not only do you achieve outcomes in your sustainability and ESG goals, but you also can transform your engagement rates, your intention rates and drive very significant improvements in your business. The win-win of sustainability has been really exciting to be a part of.
Hagler
I’m going to delve a little bit more into that in a minute. But I want to dig in, just a second, on entrepreneurial a-ha, because, Susan, you were an Entrepreneur Of The Year® winner with EY, which is a program that we have for leading entrepreneurs. Can you tell us just a little bit about that?Hunt Stevens
Sure. It was such a huge, huge surprise and honor. But in 2015, we had been nominated and become a finalist for the emerging tech category, because most of the people who are honored with Entrepreneur Of The Year are much larger companies with much more established, bigger businesses. But they do have an emerging tech category, and so we were nominated and then became the winner in emerging tech for New England and went to the nationals. For us at that time, it was such validation of what we were doing because we were this tiny company, but we were working with these big clients and just beginning to see really transformative outcomes — not only in terms of their environmental goals but also that link between participating in employee engagement programs in sustainability and HR outcomes.If you think back to 2015, that was prior to the advent of the UN Sustainable Development Goals, SDG, prior to, in many ways, the momentum around purpose led businesses. We really felt like that was the tipping point where people started to realize what we were doing had the potential to be really big. And so, it was just awesome to get that honor.
Hagler
That is super exciting and interesting. 2015 is a good pivot point to start with. So, as we think about what ESG looked like in 2015 and now what it looks like, what are some of the big changes you’ve seen over the years as it relates to ESG maybe trends and strategy, but specifically connecting that to employee engagement?Hunt Stevens
When we started working with companies on their sustainability engagement programs in 2012, the one thing we noticed is sustainability meant something different to every single company. Some companies established well-being as a big part of their strategy. Some included safety and it came out of many companies having EHS teams, environment health and safety teams, and that morphed into sustainability. But what happened in 2015 with the UN SDGs is the social component and the governance component started to come in much more strongly with this unified global framework for looking at sustainable development.What we started to see was that there was this integration to start with, and in some cases consolidation between these teams that had been very, very siloed, and so, the sustainability team might have been part of supply chain, the well-being team was part of HR, the social impact team, this might have been part of the foundation and operating very separately or under a head of social responsibility. But those teams were not necessarily connecting. Then when the UN SDGs began to include not just well-being, sustainability and social impact topics but also equity and inclusion, the D&I piece started to come in as well. And we started to see people begin to think very differently.
The first thing that happened were some of the companies that we were working with and the person we were working with had a new role over some, if not, in some cases all of these areas. And as a result, they looked at us and said, “Hey, it’s great that you’re running all our employee engagement programs tied to environment, but I’d really like you to also be supporting social impact and also supporting D&I and also supporting well-being.” We had to step back as a company and say, do we think we could tackle this? And the exciting part for us is when we had approached this whole entire problem to start with, we saw it as a behavioral problem. We saw that what folks needed was a platform to motivate and inspire behavior change. When we designed it, it really was from a platform approach, a behavior change model that was then being applied to environmental activities and action.
It actually wasn’t as big a leap as it sounds for us to go from supporting environmental programs to supporting these other programs because, ultimately, they’re all about behavior. It’s all about, what do I want my employees to do as part of a social impact program? What do I want them to do as part of a well-being program, and what do I want them to do as part of diversity and inclusion program? As long as you know what it is that you want your employees to be doing and why, a behavior change platform can deliver on that. It took us a couple years of test and learn, but in 2018, we started to launch the other modules, complementing our sustainability module. We started with, at late 2017, social impact and supporting volunteering. Then we launched well-being, then we launched diversity, equity and inclusion, what we call inclusive culture.
In 2019, the final piece of the puzzle landed when we began to be able to support the giving and matching and philanthropy sides of these ESG initiatives. Some of our clients are using it to run all of their programs in a very integrated way. Some still are using one program, but the trend is certainly to see these ESG initiatives as an integrated engagement strategy that is not only driving your ESG goals and outcomes, but also your HR goals and outcomes.
Hagler
Susan, take us through how it actually works. I have an app on my phone, is it on my computer and do I log into it every day as an employee? And if I’m somebody who is trying to roll out a program, maybe I’m trying to get people to reduce their energy usage in the office, or I’m trying to gain more volunteers for a program that I’ve got, how does it actually work?Hunt Stevens
Absolutely. I’ll walk through an example without saying who the company is. They are very forward thinking and about two years ago, brought together all of these areas underneath an impact brand. They’ve created a brand that is tied around their impact strategy. And they have the four core programs: inclusive culture; well-being; social impact, which is volunteering and giving; and the sustainability program, which we had been working with them on for a number of years, underneath that impact brand as channels or pillars within the technology platform. In an ideal world, the employee is going about their day doing and accessing content and communications the way they would always, usually through one of four different media: their email system; their intranet, if they have access to an intranet; their mobile phone, if the company has access and allows access through a mobile device; and a social platform. What our clients are doing is they’re designing campaigns and competitions and events and idea boards. They’re publishing them out through our platform but into these existing comms channels. The employees would see on the intranet a vampire energy scavenger hunt competition that’s been launched, and right now, it’s a sign-up period if you want to participate. And so, you’re signing up. It might be with you as part of a building or as part of a team or department, and you’re signing up, and in two weeks, that competition is going to start, and you’re going to start being able to, on your phone or at your desk, depending on how you access information, see what activities people want you to do as part of the vampire energy scavenger hunt.You might be looking for sources of use in copiers or plug loads at desks, and how people are using charging. You might be looking at computer settings, you might be looking in certain workplaces at equipment, and how equipment is being used. And as you are participating in this, you’re taking actions: you can upload photos, you can share stories, you can like, you can comment. That will run for, let’s say it’s a 30-day challenge, and the winners will be declared based on whatever the conditions for victory were. It might be the team that had the most participants, it might be the team that took the most activities, it might be the team that drove the most impact. And then you’re getting digital achievements and kudos for having been a member of the vampire energy scavenger hunt.
If you are a winner of the vampire energy scavenger hunt., those achievements may or may not tie into recognition and rewards. We certainly emphasize recognition as the most powerful thing to give people to acknowledge the contribution that they’ve made, to show them the impact they are making. But we have some clients who would then link this into various different rewards. We even have clients who are starting to link it into their overall compensation with a target bonus, so things like that. We certainly think that’s pretty exciting, but it’s still our most forward-thinking clients are integrating this into compensation, but most people are doing recognition and/or some form of light rewards tied into participation.
If it’s a volunteering event, like a big day of service, you’re logging in and you’re seeing all the different volunteer opportunities that you could enroll and participate in. If it’s a well-being challenge, it might be a walk around the world in all the different offices, and you’re tracking steps and seeing different things or signing up for flu clinics or flu shots. In an inclusive culture, it’s where people are participating in all the different activities that employee resource groups might be running. It could be a guest speaker, it could be a meeting that they’re holding, it could be a campaign they’re running to build awareness around veterans issues, for example, and get people to really understand the types of issues that veterans face and be able to not only learn more about how they can support veterans in the workplace but take actions and behaviors that do support veterans in the workplace. There may be specific tie-ins between social impact and the employee resource groups.
This is where all that activity is getting designed and published, and it’s also where you’re getting all the metrics of how many people are participating how many hours were donated or dollars were given or energy was saved. How did it improve psychological safety levels in the workplace? Which is one of the ways that we measure inclusive culture. How did it improve retention? Because we can look at how employees are participating in these programs and then see whether there are retention changes — six months later, 12 months later — of employees. You’re getting the three core components, is you’re designing all these programs to the platform and pushing out to existing comms channels. You’re tracking all the things that people are doing, and then you’re measuring the impact that all that activity is having on business outcomes.
Hagler
Okay, that makes perfect sense to me. It sounds like, first of all, you’re making sure you’re leveraging ways that people already access information, so it may or may not be an additional type of communication, but it’s leveraging channels that they already have. And also, that you’re really using the power of recognition to get people involved, that people like to have likes or their photos out or be recognized. One of my questions here is how does a company figure out vampire energy challenges, or (Laughs) you know, some of these other programs? I saw one client that was bringing a cup to work and everybody was bringing their reusable cups or something like that. Does every company have to figure those out for themselves or how does that work?Hunt Stevens
We take a two-pronged approach to this. The first is, having been a buy of technology when I was an executive in a large company, there’s nothing worse than getting technology that’s really hard to use and that you don’t have somebody who’s an expert helping guide you in the use of that technology. We’ve always had a very strong approach to customer success and see the role of customer success is helping companies with their content strategy, their communication strategy, and their reporting and their metrics in business value assessments. One of the things that we do is we help clients really think through, given our ESG goals, what is the content strategy that we should pursue in each of these different areas?And then in terms of the content itself, it can come from several places, but one of the things we’re proudest of is our Behavioral Programs Library. We’ve actually won an Edison Award for innovation around this. Because what it does is it allows people to use our tools to build a behavior-based engagement program without having to understand behavior design. Think of it as, we may make photo books for Christmas that are beautiful photo books, but we never went to graphic design school, because there’s these websites that are basically helping us be graphic designers. We do the same thing for behavior design. When a client develops a program, and that program is really successful, they’re given the choice to keep it private or to share it into the library. We have over 400 programs in our library today that have been designed in partnership with clients and then shared. These are battle-tested, proven programs to drive impact and engagement. We really benefit from the wisdom of our network in being able to do this.
From time to time, our network will say, hey, I don’t see something in the library about implicit bias and we’re really needing to tackle implicit bias in the workplace. It’s something that we really recognize we need to do more from a behavior standpoint around. We will then go out and look for a content partner, an expert in that area, and work with them to design programs for that client. That client will run those programs; if they’re successful, share those back into the library with other clients. It’s been exciting to see this whole network effect of the WeSpire community really driving innovation and making it easier for customers to really figure out what kinds of activities they may want to do with each other. And they share regularly and quarterly calls, what kinds of things they’re doing. It’s another benefit of being part of a community of people all trying to achieve the same thing, which is getting their employees engaged in their ESG strategies.
Hagler
Perfect. What I heard you say, first of all, is definitely attached to that your employee engagement programs obviously should be aligned to the ESG goals that you have. So, even if something looks like a cute, cool program, if it’s not really achieving your ESG goals, perhaps it’s not the right for you and you guide people to choose that, but there’s a whole network of people creating these programs that you can leverage and continues to grow all the time. What do you see different today? You and I were chatting earlier, it seems like the world has just changed substantially. As you’re looking at where your clients are focusing, where they are creating programs, what changes are you seeing?Hunt Stevens
Well, certainly COVID changed everything on two fronts to start with. The first is that most of our customers either had to furlough a huge portion of their workforce or send everybody to a remote work environment. For those clients who were moving their employees to a remote work environment, all of a sudden having digital tools to engage them in various initiatives became a critical piece of enabling technology. We found two things. One is that people started to leverage their WeSpire platform for programs that were really tackling some of the core issues related to COVID.We had everything from social distancing 101 to healthy habits, to engaging kids at home, managing stress and anxiety, everything that they needed to get the information out and get the employees doing the things they need them to do to keep themselves safe. And, of course, are now seeing, in some cases some programs around safe return to work, and things like that. That was big for everybody.
The second thing that happened right after they were getting folks kind of settled and engaged in COVID-related programs were obviously everything related to racial justice and equity. We saw clients really recognizing, wow, we’ve got to engage our employees in these courageous conversations that need to take place around racial justice and equity, and how and what do we want to engage employees in. What we saw was a burst of activity first and foremost in the area of supporting organizations, so we were running a lot of campaigns that were driving donations and matches and things like that into racial justice and equity organizations. But now what we’ve seen is really people wanting to emphasize inclusivity and how you can bring people together, how you build more awareness of equity and justice issues. And we’ve even seen those clients who still lean a little bit more heavily towards sustainability, and may not even actively have inclusive culture yet, be looking at this climate and equity connection. We’ve seen a lot of innovation and campaigns and programs to raise awareness around climate justice and equity and as part of their sustainability initiatives. So, from figuring out activities to do digital earth days to virtual volunteering, and we partnered with organizations that enable some really, really cool virtual volunteering opportunities to then all the work both on the behavioral front and the community support front around justice and equity.
It’s been a really, really busy year for us. (Laughs) The fact that we had something that was at the right place and the right time to help companies who were really struggling with how do I reach all of my employees when they’re at home, and how do I get them engaged in these issues that are just so important right now to society and to us as a forward-thinking workplace? To be able to offer things that have been a solution to that problem is probably one of the proudest moments in my career.
Hagler
Susan, it actually does seem exactly like right time, right solution. That’s perfect. As I think about some of the issues that you brought up and how you even, how you connect them, environmental and social justice, for example, is something that I think a lot of companies struggle with. It’s one of those things that theoretically you understand it, or maybe you read a really good article about it. Let’s just dive into one specific example of how something like environmental justice could manifest itself on your platform.Hunt Stevens
What we’ve seen is two to three different ways that people are tackling this topic. First is to acknowledge that very, very few people understand the intersectionality between these two. And so, there’s a lot of basic awareness building and activation to do around the topic. We see the campaign feature of our platform has been used by several clients to create climate justice campaigns. And those campaigns have a first component that’s a lot of learning and just really understanding what are the issues that connect climate and justice. And how do you build awareness around that, and what are the kinds of things that you should know, arguably as a well-informed human being, about how climate affects disproportionately communities of color and/or different neighborhoods economically?The next topic is okay, what can you do about it and what are some actions you can take in this area. There can be activities that are related to volunteering on climate justice issues. There can be organizations that benefit from donations and matches that companies are encouraging to climate justice-based organizations. And then there are certain activities that you can be directed to, everything from fun assessments that kind of test your climate equity IQ and things like that, and to really build the awareness around this. The third is encouraging others to learn. There’s usually activities in the campaign that will be about storytelling and sharing your story around this. Sharing an example of an organization that’s doing really good work in your community around climate justice, and that encourages the storytelling aspect. The goal of getting people participating in the campaign is to really raise, first and foremost, the awareness levels of the workforce around these topics and then to capture activities that are going to be beneficial activities in this area. We’ll even see that morph into idea boards where companies, employees who have gone through these campaigns, can now suggest ideas about what the company can be doing to be more sensitive to climate equity and climate justice.
That’s where you start seeing we should be looking things ideas and suggestions like when we’re making decisions about where we put data centers, we should be looking at climate justice is one of the criteria for site decisions. When you start getting employees looking at the company operations, who they partner with, where they put things, who their suppliers are, things like that, that’s when you really start to see the innovation that can come from this awareness building, and we’ve seen that all along is that when you give people a new set of glasses on how to look at the world through a sustainability lens, or a social impact lens, or an inclusivity or a health lens, the first thing that happens is they start to change how they’re behaving.
The second thing is they start to realize, wow, there’s all these other things that we could do, as a company, that’s going to make us more competitive, more inclusive, more of a force for good in this world. And that is one of the most powerful pieces of these programs, is when you not only are increasing the overall ESG IQ of your employees, but you’re really getting employees now to think about how should we, as a company, be operating differently and better in this world, both from a inspire companies to build a better working world but also from a higher performing company as a result.
Hagler
I love where this conversation is going because sometimes I think we take a look and we start to measure, number of hits, or number of volunteer hours, things like this. What I hear you saying is that using this platform, yes, we do want to measure the number of people who are engaged with it, and we do want to compare it to our retention or things like that. But what I think I just heard you say is that this could also be a platform to really help with business innovation.Hunt Stevens
Absolutely. And the idea boards feature actually came out of partnering with one of our clients, who’s considered one of the most forward-thinking companies in the world on sustainability innovation. It was to help them run these employee challenges of getting ideas for some of the things they were struggling most with. What happens in the cycle of ESG innovation in a company is there’s some of that low hanging fruit that from a central command and control standpoint, you can just make a decision as the sustainability team or the facilities team to do it. Change the lightbulbs, do a power purchase agreement, things like that. But, ultimately, you run out of those things, and what you have to start really thinking creatively about is, all right, where are we really struggling to hit these big hairy, audacious goals we set? Whether that’s net carbon zero, or zero waste, or things like that. And where do we need to think differently about how we reach these goals — and even creating solutions to the problem you have that, because it solves your problem, can solve lots of other people’s problems and become entire lines of business.I’ve seen clients who had a waste problem, for example, and run innovation challenges and create a business not only to handle the recycling of their own waste product that they couldn’t figure out how to recycle, but now realized if we couldn’t figure out how to do it, there’s thousands of other businesses that are struggling with this who are also wanting to recycle this, and we may be able to build a business if we offer this as a service. They’ve done it, and they’ve done it very, very successfully. And that’s, to me, the most exciting piece of the ESG puzzle, is that when we go from let’s raise the ESG IQ of our entire workforce, as a result, our workforce is more engaged, they want to work here more, they’re prouder of us, they’re telling our customers all about this. They’re figuring out with that lens, how we can reduce costs in our workplace, how we can build or grow revenues and new customer segments, and new lines of business with that lens as well.
And that’s just the most exciting part of ESG innovation and, of course, when your employees can be the greatest source of that innovation. And so what we tend to see is that step one is get everybody understanding what ESG actually is and what you as an employee can do at work and at home to have an impact. And then once you start doing those things, now you see the world through a different lens and can begin to make suggestions and ideas and do things that really, really transform some of the business opportunities that you have.
Hagler
Employee engagement in ESG can clearly drive business value, and your platform helps to create that engagement as well as track the actual benefit that is being created. That’s pretty tough for some companies to do as well.Hunt Stevens
The piece that companies really hadn’t realized, and candidly, (laughs) we almost stumble upon it thanks to a couple of our clients, was this relationship between participation and ESG initiatives and HR outcomes. That was the piece, in particular, that we had to solve and really be able to demonstrate for our clients. Because, yes, saving energy, wastewater and fuel has a hard ROI for some clients. But for a lot of clients, the energy waste and water and fuel usage is not a huge cost driver in their business. And so, it was only when we were able to demonstrate that those employees who are participating in your ESG activities were more likely to recommend the company, were more likely to retain at the company, were more likely to be leaders and supervisors in the future that companies began to say, oh, wait a minute, okay, the value of this is not just in hitting our environmental and social goals, but this is also something that is key to hitting our culture goals. The value of a one percentage in improvement and retention, for some large organizations, can be literally millions and millions of dollars.We’ve been able to demonstrate that participation in the ESG activities can drive 10 percentage point improvements in engagement, in some segments of high turnover employees, 37 percentage point improvements in retention. That is mind-blowing to people. And that really changes the conversation from ESG activities being the right thing to do to ESG activities being the smart thing to do.
Hagler
Wow, 37% in some cases. That really is amazing practical advice. This is what we want to do, is share ideas for really practically how can you do these things and create value for society and for your organization. So, Susan, what is next for WeSpire, and where do you see employee engagement as it relates to ESG going?Hunt Stevens
First of all, the combination of factors tied into 2020 certainly is pushing forward by maybe two, three years, our cycle of adoption in companies. And companies really recognizing that if they don’t have a tool to do digital employee engagement, get one, and get one fast. That, of course, is having us do all sorts of really interesting things, particularly there’s a lot of global interest in this, coming from Asia, Europe, etc. We just added 20 languages to the WeSpire platform, so you can engage employees in their native language, which we didn’t have before this year.The second thing is that the acknowledgement that being a purpose-driven business is what every business should be doing, is becoming more and more accepted. Whether it is the letter that’s coming from Larry Fink at BlackRock or if it is Jamie Dimon and the statement from the Business Roundtable, I think every company is recognizing that they need to have an important purpose that has a positive impact on society in addition to profit. You can say you have a purpose, but if you aren’t engaging employees in that purpose and providing a way for them to activate around that purpose, it ends up being words on a web page or in an annual report and not something that’s really deep and meaningful and real to your culture. A lot of people are going through a purpose journey to really articulate what is our purpose in addition to profit. But then, how do we bring that to life?
That is where I see this just huge overlap between ESG and purpose. For many companies, what they’ve really started to acknowledge is that within the ESG framework where can their purpose really shine. Then, of course, how do we get our employees really aligned and activated around where our purpose can shine through in the ESG lens? That trend is also accelerating and is really the top-of-mind conversation. Now, some companies still have to really do the materiality assessment from an ESG standpoint, like what are the really material factors that we need to be thinking about from an ESG standpoint. And I know you all and others do great work on that front, and we’re thrilled when we know that somebody has done that because then those materiality factors can help guide their purpose, but also guide what engagement programs to emphasize.
We love it when somebody has really articulated their purpose then really done an ESG materiality assessment to understand where their biggest opportunities and risks are. We can come in and really help them put together the employee engagement strategy around that purpose and those ESG targets and goals.
Hagler
Well, we know working with our clients that the ones that are closely aligned with their purpose and their ESG strategy aligns to that, and they’re focusing on their material issues, they have better financial outcomes, and that has been documented. I love how all the pieces fit together, Susan. I really appreciate what you and your team are doing to help so many companies really activate their employees as it relates to ESG. Anything else before we close?Hunt Stevens
The other thought I would just leave with your listeners is that the sustainability teams I think have a very powerful role to play in building an inclusive culture. And I think the encouragement I would give to all sustainability colleagues is that if you are not BFFs with your head of diversity and inclusion, to quickly become BFFs with your head of diversity and inclusion. Because one of the things that we see is that inclusive cultures are more innovative cultures because people are more comfortable taking risks. And yet, many people cannot answer the question, how psychologically safe is my organization? They just don’t know.What’s been fascinating is, as we have worked with some very large organizations to help them answer that question of how psychologically safe is their organization and where are their strengths and where are their weaknesses, one of the things we often see is that the place they’re weak is in this area of willingness to take risks.
If you are the head of sustainability, you have to have a company and a culture that’s willing to take risks. By having and emphasizing the importance of agility and innovation and risk taking as part of psychological safety, you can benefit from the things you’re going to be able to do from a sustainability front. And obviously, in an ESG framework, those two areas, inclusivity and sustainability, are connected. There is a huge opportunity for inclusivity and sustainability to really lock-step in this whole idea of building a psychologically safe culture, that is a place where not only can people thrive who, for whatever reason, may be a minority in that culture, but it also is a way to really hone on the ability of the organization to take these risks that we’re going to need to take to hit audacious 2030 and beyond goals.
If you’re struggling with getting your company to do the things you need to do to hit big goals, often that’s because it’s a risk adverse culture. By teaming up with your inclusivity colleagues and building psychological safety, you can really tackle that. Those two teams working together could be one of the most powerful trends for this next decade.
Hagler
That sounds like an whole other podcast. Susan, thank you so much for being here.Hunt Stevens
Thank you so much, Chris, for having me and for sharing, to get the opportunity to share the WeSpire story and also the opportunity that I think everyone who is listening has to better engage their employees on these topics and the magic that happens when they do.Hagler
I think that is so true. This is an opportunity for virtually every organization listening to this podcast — both public, private, whatever type of organization you have — this is a huge opportunity.If you would like to know more about Susan Hunt Stevens and WeSpire, please check them out at www.WeSpire.com. You can follow them on Twitter as well @goWeSpire and you follow Susan @huntstevens. Please follow me @chrishagler and EY Sustainable Impact Hub @EY_Sustainable and please subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks so much for listening.