We get a lot of questions from sustainability leads and green teams about strategies for increasing employee participation rates. Sometimes people are curious about participation rates elsewhere, wondering if their struggles are typical or not. In other cases, the tenor of questions is more cynical—green team members tell me that their situation is unique, that people in the organization “just don’t care.”
Engaging Employees: Challenges and Incentives
In these conversations I tend to ask a lot of questions—about what the team has tried, about the strategies they’ve used to attract participants. I also ask if participation in other optional programs—like wellness—is low too. The responses help me understand their particular challenges and whether the organization has internal resources to address those challenges. (If, for example, wellness events are well attended but the green team can’t attract participants, I suggest we start a discussion with the wellness team, so that we understand what they are doing more effectively).
When talking about what’s worked or not worked, I focus on what was offered and how it was promoted to people. These are, after all, the things that the green team can change. More, I want to pivot the conversation from one focused on what might be wrong with those non-participants to one focused on how the green team can make its offerings more appealing to potential participants.
The reality is that the non-participants are just regular people like you and I. They have work deadlines and family obligations and countless other stressors that compete for their attention on an hour-by-hour basis. As such they (we all!) cope by being a cognitive miser, that is by juggling the most important items and ignoring (or putting on auto-pilot) all the rest.
Reframing Employee Engagement and Participation
While green team members tend to put actions associated with environmental sustainability—recycling, reducing energy usage—in the important bucket, many others might ignore those messages because their important bucket is already overfull of other stuff. Research tells us this is doubly true when people are stressed—our capacity to absorb new information drops dramatically if we feel anxious or afraid.
The first challenge, then, for the green team, is to be sure that they are offering something relevant and compelling—something valuable enough to deserve an employee’s limited time and attention. To be clear: this means relevant and compelling to the audience, not to the green team.
Those well-intentioned articles on corporate recycling protocols in the employee newsletter likely go unread. And lunchtime meetings where sustainability leads talk at employees about corporate sustainability goals are sparsely attended. Asking people to give you their time so that you can talk about issues that matter to you—not them—is a huge imposition. Of course participation rates are low; these efforts offer little value to employees in exchange for their voluntary time, attention, and participation.
Add Value to Increase Participation
If you want employees to participate in your sustainability efforts, you need to offer them something that they will value. This is easier than it sounds—research tells us that more than seven in ten employees want to help their companies be more sustainable so, really, even offering them a chance to be an active part of the solution is better than just talking at them. Cool Choices’ approach takes this further—our programs start with ways employees can benefit personally: saving money at home, increasing personal well-being, earning recognition. By framing the effort as one where the company is helping employees thrive, we engage participants who are less motivated by corporate goals. We know there’s fierce competition for employee attention so our partners present employees with an opportunity that benefits them personally – “you can save more than $100/ year, and you can have some fun, and you might win a prize.” Inertia is a powerful thing so it’s important to offer value. If employee participation benefits the sustainability team but not the employees, it should not be surprising that people do not show up. Instead of blaming employees for being human, reshape your offer.
Once you are sure that there are compelling reasons to participate in your sustainability program, you can turn your attention to how you communicate about the opportunity. Again, remember your audience of cognitive misers—they have limited time and attention so be brief and, wherever possible, be interactive. Rather than depending on posters or email messages, generate some conversations—and not just among the green team.
Create Incentives to Participate
In every organization there are informal opinion leaders—these are the folks other people listen to in the break room. When you want to generate buzz, a good place to start is by engaging these opinion leaders, talking with them about the program and its benefits and getting their feedback. In that conversation you can ask them how they would get others involved and you can make them part of your recruitment team. People are deeply influenced by their peers—so if you get these informal opinion leaders excited about what you are doing, others will follow.
If you have a history of low participation, you might well need an extra lure to turn things around. Here you need to be careful that you don’t fall into a pattern where you have to pay people to participate—that is not effective. It can be effective, though, to have a door prize at a particular event or even some treats to sweeten the appeal of the first event.
The key here is to make sure that the event itself delivers value. Staff might attend once for free cookies, but that won’t keep them engaged; the content has to resonate. Ideally, that first event will generate even more buzz—so that folks who didn’t attend realize they missed out and make a point of participating next time.
Increasing employee participation in sustainability efforts is a process but it is well worth the effort. So roll up your sleeves and get to it—and let us know if we can help!
Learn more about increasing participation in sustainability efforts via our related on-demand webinar or contact us to talk about how we can help you make your efforts contagious.
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