While top organizational leadership is typically involved in creating a sustainability strategy, the enactment of the strategy happens by other employees inside an organization. This work gets distributed across the organization and is most often quickly passed out of top leadership and into the hands of the workers.

Some organizations have resources to hire new sustainability managers or create new internal positions. In these privileged organizations, an individual has been clearly identified and has explicitly agreed to take on this role. In some cases, new sustainability managers have experience with what this means in terms of building multi-stakeholder teams, creating and working toward benchmarks, collecting data, writing and filing reports, and reporting back to other leaders.

Typically, the burden of enacting sustainability strategies is dispersed across employees who happen to be around or happen to have something to do with the focus of the strategy.

More typically, the burden of enacting sustainability strategies is dispersed across employees who happen to be around or happen to have something to do with the focus of the strategy. Many of the organizations I have worked with have inadvertently put enormous pressure on their employees by failing to understand what it means for individuals when responsibility for sustainability action is given on them. Individuals tend to be excited about activities they can contribute to that in turn have positive outcomes for society and the environment. This initial enthusiasm can support the efforts that the actual work requires and can cause awkward dissonance as those doing the work become exhausted but feel they should still be excited about the opportunity. I have seen this play out in the same ways across organizations.

In a large DIY business, a quality assurance manager became responsible for verifying factory adherence to their new and developing sustainability standards. The QA manager was used to looking at products, usually in domestic warehouses, not determining adherence to standards inside foreign factories. The demands being placed on the QA manager to learn multiple new skill sets were enormous. He had to understand, and in some cases develop, the sustainability policies for foreign factories, to figure out how to support foreign factories in meeting those new standards while knowing of horror stories around the secondary effects of factories firing women, and to learn how to communicate with the factories so that the amount of his new orders aligned with the rates of their compliant output. The new skills needed to enact the sustainability standards became a burden placed on this QA manager. He had to figure out how to document, report and communicate these activities internally and externally to the organization.

While eager employees may be initially thrilled to take on sustainability responsibilities, this can change as the reality of the work piles up over weeks and months.

At a transport business, the manager who oversaw trucking fleets was given the new responsibility of monitoring greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions for the organization. They had to figure out how to monitor the trucking fleet, which was most likely straightforward, as this was part of their current job. However, they also had to identify other sources of GHG emissions from the fans and forklifts in their factories to the engines running the conveyor belts, and this task is complex. Very complex. It involved people and parts of the organization the trucking manager did not know. It meant gaining an understanding of how to keep track of these various people and measurements. It meant being able to understand what the measurements meant and being able to incorporate them into one ultimate number that could go into a report. all while still maintaining their original job.

The person responsible for maintenance at a local authority became responsible for transitioning to environmentally friendly internal ordering. She had to seek new suppliers who carried a full line of environmentally friendly products that were needed and negotiate new prices. These may be unwelcome changes, but well within her area of expertise. What was not in her area of expertise was what to do about shortfalls when her budget would not be increased to reflect the increased pricing she faced. She had to look across the whole organization to see where cuts could be made and where savings could be found. She determined that some savings could be made through behavior change of people using the facilities, and thus a campaign was needed. This was not within her initial skillset.

Short-term thinking will not accomplish long-term goals. One of the reasons industries known for not being sustainable, such as tobacco and oil and gas, have adopted sustainability initiatives is so that they can gain access to better employees.

The burden of enacting sustainability comes in different ways. For many, their job descriptions are dramatically expanded or completely changed with no warning. This increases the amount of work they need to do and expands the knowledge and skills they need to do their jobs.

The stress of adapting to new responsibilities in a role is made more complex when the role includes anything around sustainability. Employees are learning new knowledge, new frameworks, and new skills on top of their other work. While eager employees may be initially thrilled to take on sustainability responsibilities, this can change as the reality of the work piles up over weeks and months and progress reports need to be written, supply chains need to be audited and tracked, external input needs to be collected and addressed, progress needs to be documented, annual reports must be published, etc.This is further exacerbated by the drudgery of sustainability reports. Collecting data and writing a report is a lot of work. Creating sustainability reports that will adhere to European Sustainability Reporting Standards (ESRS), the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI), or other reporting frameworks is a massive undertaking with a steep learning curve. These reports take months to fill out and often are partially graded on completeness, which means having issues and items in their intended places something that is not always clear. Those who can afford the luxury hire others to help them learn how to fill-out the forms because they are both difficult to understand and cumbersome to complete. These reports may be separate from other industry-specific reports, and hopefully your organization will create its own sustainability report that reflects a more personal and person-oriented look at your sustainability efforts. Regardless of the report type, the work of sustainability reporting is extraordinarily time-consuming. This is not new. Increased workloads happen when there is a transition to monitored activity. Agricultural producers face barriers in transitioning to organic because the paperwork is endless. The auditing industry faced increased workload after the ENRON scandal in 2001 led to new, increased monitored activities and new standards. Similarly, writing sustainability reports, and seeking sustainability accreditations or labels requires increased work.

Your employees harbour a wealth of life experience that normally does not come to light at work; this is an opportunity to let some of their expertise come to light.

There exists an idea in Western societies that “doing sustainability” is a good thing, and thus, the people who get to do this work should be happy; employees should be thrilled when the organization they work for adopts a robust sustainability initiative. There is an expectation that employees should and will feel so appreciative to have their job imbued with this layer of meaning that they will not complain about the extra work. Afterall, individuals should be honoured to be chosen or invited or given the opportunity to be part of a sustainability initiative. Their jobs are made more meaningful when individuals get to contribute to sustainability; employees should be proud and happy that we have meaningful work. In reality however, this just leads to burnout.

Employees may choose to take on sustainability projects in their organization because of the personal boost it gives them. However, when they are not compensated for the additional projects and must work into the evening or on the weekends to stay on top of their normal work, the benefit of the sustainability project must be called into account. It could be that the project has a huge return on investment to your organization, your sustainability strategy, and your stakeholders. If this is the case, workloads need to be adjusted to reflect this value. Overwork, even for a noble cause, is not acceptable, not sustainable, and does not adhere to ideas of Fair Work. If your sustainability strategies are to be taken seriously and accomplish long-term goals, they must be enacted within human limitations.

Celebrating learning from each other and learning from the process is a powerful tool to encourage engagement and ownership.

Short-term thinking will not accomplish long-term goals. One of the reasons industries known for not being sustainable, such as tobacco and oil and gas, have adopted sustainability initiatives is so that they can gain access to better employees. These industries rely on the desirability brought by their sustainability work to entice people, who otherwise would not have considered a position in such a company. Third-sector organizations dismiss expected low wages, something associated with the type of work they are doing.

Sustainability strategies can drive organizational and personal growth and value and behaviour change, or they can suck the lifeblood out of already exhausted people who were just looking to focus on something more meaningful at work. Burnout is not a good reward for doing the work of sustainability.

Supporting ongoing engagement with your sustainability strategy.

Guidance and resources are needed to be successful this most likely will come from outside your organization. You cannot do this alone. The employees you have tasked to enact your sustainability strategies, likewise, cannot do it alone. This could mean going to conferences or workshops to gain missing skills, or creating working groups across organizations within the communities where you work, or online across others who work in your industry. Collaboration and learning exchange are both necessary for you to thrive.

The first place to start is making your sustainability strategy a creative journey. Make sure it is understood that everyone in the organization is on a journey together.

Too often doing sustainability gets pushed down to mere auditing and reporting, rather than highlighted as an exploration into the process of new kinds of engagement, transformation and impact. Many organizations place too much emphasis on reports, forgetting to identify the stories of the real people who have headed the work within the organization, the engagement with other stakeholders, and the experiences and outcomes that have been created as a result of great effort. Taking time to highlight the narrative of how something was accomplished or who did something brilliant that caused a pivotal change will lead to greater engagement inside the organization, and greater legitimacy for your position as an organization on a sustainability journey outside the organization.

Employees engaged in doing sustainability can be supported by creating a platform for them to share their learnings across your organization. This is different from knowledge sharing or exchange. Learning exchange refers to the knowledge, the things they have learned, and how they have applied that information to different problems. Sharing knowledge does not necessarily spark innovation, however, sharing learning allows people to see where they might apply similar solutions, or how similar solutions could be adjusted to address issues they are facing in their work. Enabling learning exchange highlights and celebrates the new expertise employees have developed, and also invites others to share their own experiences. Your employees harbour a wealth of life experience that normally does not come to light at work; this is an opportunity to let some of their expertise come to light. Learning exchange is about making space for growing enthusiasm for lifelong learning within your organization and celebrating it.

In addition to publicly acknowledging the work those doing sustainability inside your organization have been engaged in, creating opportunities for learning exchange outside your organization within your industry or community will increase the impact of your sustainability strategy. Further, these learning exchanges will create opportunities for you to document your impact in a variety of experiential ways from photographs and videos of events to creative works of art and design or innovation that emerge from these exchanges. This is one way your organization can become a catalyst for broad positive impact.

As you develop learning exchanges, encourage the individuals who are deeply engaged in doing sustainability within your organization to share their process, not just the outcomes. Encourage them to share what they don’t know, what they worry about, and what went wrong in their journeys to the positive outcomes you celebrate. Celebrate all participants, by name and contribution if they are comfortable with this, and encourage each participant to celebrate their collaborators and the people who inspired and encouraged them. Take time to tie these celebrations back into the main parts of your sustainability strategy, the value proposition of your organization, and the high-level goals you are working toward.

Celebrating individuals builds a culture of inclusion, agency, and continued engagement with your sustainability strategy. Celebrate the individuals in your organization who are learning new frameworks and skills, taking on new activities, exploring the edges of their comfort zones, and innovating together.

Everything must be linked directly to the big goals you laid out for how your sustainability strategy enacts the value proposition of your organization.

How can I engage every person in my organization on this creative journey?

Engage in a creative journey. The first place to start is making your sustainability strategy a creative journey. Make sure it is understood that everyone in the organization is on a journey together, and identify clearly the agency you are offering. If you can offer support in terms of time, budgets, materials, make that clear. Most important is that you demonstrate over and over that creativity and initiative are celebrated, and whatever the outcome a success, a failure you are prepared to learn and adapt and iterate. I have seen awards for biggest fail, praise for best insight from a failure, presentations on multiple failures that ultimately led to a great innovation. Celebrating learning from each other and learning from the process is a powerful tool to encourage engagement and ownership.

Invite the “unheard” and marginalized to have a central voice. Inviting those who don’t typically come forward to participate in your sustainability journey can have transformative results for your sustainability journey, your organization, and their individual life journey. Making a specific call to those who are not already engaged is critical. Think carefully about whose voices are often unheard in your organization. You may have done work around Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in your organization, which points to key elements to consider including race, religion, LGBTQI+, transgender, hidden disability, visible disability, people over 50 or under 30, seniority in the organization, and intersectionalities. If you have not done serious EDI work, do note that there is growing evidence showing that diversity yields, unsurprisingly, more innovative, and better results. However, it must also be noted that inclusion takes cultural work. Inviting people to be ‘included’ without making it possible will cause self-doubt and greater uncertainty and can be considered ‘gaslighting’. If you have not done this cultural work to make space for diversity in your organization, please do it now – yes, right now. This is not just “soft” skills, this is not hiring policies, this means creating a culture where everyone feels they belong and can contribute and develop personally and professionally; this is a social sustainability issue.

Celebrate learning from each other. Create opportunities for learning exchange sessions where people engaged in the work of sustainability, or interested in a particular topic can share their personal experiences and knowledge with each other. Include seemingly “odd” mix of people and let them share across their silos. Celebrate the process and communicate clearly about the process. Make sure these “process updates” are shared and celebrated internally.

Create opportunities for learning exchange sessions where people engaged in the work of sustainability can share their personal experiences and knowledge with each other.

Expect to iterate

You can do this. You can develop a sustainability strategy that aligns with your value proposition, your organizational goals and your personal goals. You can bring your organization, and your industry along. You can bring energy and ideas and impact into your organization. You can transform in any way you want. It will take work, so make sure the work is aligned with the vision, make sure the work is focused on a shared goal, and by all means, make sure that no one person takes it all on, takes it on alone, or heads toward burnout. A creative journey means embracing the unknown, celebrating and learning from successes and failures, and supporting each other. Focusing on metrics and reports is a route to failure. Focusing on people, positive impact, and the joy of collaboration, learning from each other and ultimate transformation is your route to success.