The DNA of Work

Beyond green - is net zero part of your organisation's culture?

• Season 1 • Episode 55

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Unlock the secrets of transforming good intentions into actionable plans in the face of climate crisis with our special guest, Richard Lupo, managing director of Shift Environment and author of Happiness by Numbers. Lupo shares his insights on the UK's march towards achieving net zero and how climate change influences our day-to-day lives. AWA's Lara Al Ansari and Brad Taylor also join us, fresh from the AWA Institute's event, 'Beyond Green', sharing their thoughts on making net zero a part of corporate culture. We stress the fact that for any significant change to occur, our well-meaning intentions need to evolve into actionable strategies.

We delve into the potency of incentives and nudging in encouraging greener modes of transport and fostering sustainable habits at work. We examine how leadership styles and corporate culture can enable sustainability initiatives and ensure all are included in the NetZero journey. Our conversation emphasizes clear communication, rational understanding and emotional engagement as essential tools in driving change. Prepare to rethink your sustainability strategy as we discuss the importance of a clear vision and an actionable plan in shaping a sustainable future.

AWA Host: Karen Plum

Guests: 

  • Richard Lupo, Managing Director SHIFT Environment - driving sustainability through environmental reporting and related consultancy
  • Brad Taylor, Director of Consulting, AWA
  • Lara Al Ansari, Analysis & Insights Lead, AWA

With thanks to AWA Senior Associate Monique Pothoff for her thoughts on the AWA Institute event.

 AWA Guest details: https://www.advanced-workplace.com/our-team/ 

 Mentions:

 

CONTACTS & WEBSITE details:

AWA contact:  Andrew Mawson 

 AWA Institute contact: Natalia Savitcaia 

Music: Licensed by Soundstripe – Lone Canyon



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Karen Plum:

Hello there. Wherever you live in the world, it's pretty clear that the climate crisis is intensifying. We're seeing record shattering temperatures and volatile weather conditions, all of which signal an urgent need for climate action, and while governments, often swayed by political considerations, seem to be wavering and changing direction, is this the time for organizations to step up and drive meaningful change? We think it is, and in this episode, we'll explain why and how. Welcome to AWA's podcast, which is all about the changing world of work and trying to figure out what's right for each organization, because we know that everyone is unique. We talk to people who have walked the walk, who've got the t-shirt and who've learned lessons that they're happy to share with us. I'm your host, Karen Plum, and this is the DNA of work.

Karen Plum:

In September 2023, the AWA Institute held an event called 'Beyond Green - making net zero part of corporate culture'. After the event, my colleague, Monique Pothoff, wrote on LinkedIn that her conclusion was that it's not enough to have good intentions. We need to turn those good intentions into actionable plans, and the event was able to share some of the plans that organizations are mobilising today. So I wanted to continue the discussion in this episode and invited three guests to share some of the learnings from the event. Later we'll hear from two of my colleagues who attended, Lara A l Ansari and Brad Taylor. But firstly I talked to Richard Lupo, one of the event's guest speakers. Richard is managing director of SHIFT Environment and the author of Happiness by Numbers. I started by asking Richard if he could kick us off by setting the scene and explaining where we are in the UK on the road to achieving net zero.

Richard Lupo:

In the UK we're still emitting hundreds and hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions and other greenhouse gases, so they're still having an impact. I will say that it has decreased since 10 years ago, but we're still emitting hundreds of millions of tonnes of carbon emissions, so there's still a way to go if we want to get to ne t zero. And, I can talk about hundreds of millions of tonnes, and its a big number. What I like to do is portray it and what it means for us, the people who live here. These are all UK statistics and how these might affect us, and they're all down to climate change. I suppose the most easy one to pick on is flood risk. Environment Agency stats say that about one in six of our homes are at threat of flooding and that's due to the climate changes, the different types of rainfall and our infrastructure not being ready for it.

Karen Plum:

One in six.

Richard Lupo:

One in six, yeah.

Karen Plum:

That's a huge number and that's across the UK, is it?

Richard Lupo:

That's across the UK. Yeah, yeah, one in six homes.

Karen Plum:

Wow. Well, I live up a hill, so I guess if I'm flooding then we've got a whole different problem, haven't we? That's quite a scary number.

Richard Lupo:

It's a good point. Even living up a hill, the pattern of the flooding events will change, so the projections are that 80% of flood events will be due to surface water runoff. Even if you're on top of a hill, if it's a heavily paved area, you're still at risk. I've had clients whose offices have flooded and they were on top of a hill and that office was knocked out for a whole year before they could reoccupy it again. My client base at least one client has had a major flood event that's affected people that have had to evacuate the buildings and clean up afterwards. So that's a real event.

Karen Plum:

Yes, and much more common now, aren't they?

Richard Lupo:

Yeah. O verheating is the other one. There's a projection for overheating. We've already experienced heat waves. They're getting worse and worse each year and a lot of homes are going to be slowly, particularly in the south, in highly dense areas, and offices as well. They're going to become unoccupiable. They're going to be just too warm to occupy, or the only way to occupy them is to put air conditioning in and switch that on, which of course requires electricity and causes even more carbon emissions.

Karen Plum:

Does it help that many more people now are working from home than were five years ago, or does that just give us a problem of lots of overheated homes as well? Of course it does.

Richard Lupo:

Yeah, it transfers the problem, doesn't it? From offices to homes. So how it affects us as well water efficiency or water supply. The Environment Agency have done some really good work, projecting overall less rainfall on the United Kingdom. It's different than the flood events, which will happen in short periods, but over a year there'll be less rainfall. So our water supply is affected really, and there's statistics about the current government thinking. There's a statistic of 110 litres per person per day, but we're around 145 litres per per son per day, actual usage, so that's water efficiency and, again, less water falling on our land is due to climate change.

Karen Plum:

Which is going to affect crops as well, isn't it?

Richard Lupo:

Yeah, crops. I mean the more water that gets used for households impacts the less water available for industry, or vice versa. We've got a certain amount of water that we've got to share out between us in a more sustainable way. Air quality - so carbon emissions aren't an air pollutant that affects our respiratory systems, but the things that we burn that cause carbon emissions do contribute to air quality issues. Roughly around 10% of our days in the UK exceed the safe limits for air quality, and that's in all regions of the UK. And that could be fossil fuel burning in diesel engines, with the particulates coming out of the end, or brake dust from the brake discs from the cars also as well, so that all affects our air quality.

Karen Plum:

So you mentioned that the air quality was across all regions and, as someone living in the South West, I was surprised to see that my region was just like all the others, and that was quite a surprise.

Richard Lupo:

I don't know the exact detail for every region, but a lot of the emissions are this particulates and NOx emissions from normally urban areas. But there could be particulates from I don't know, from farming activities, from - you've got the motorways going through, you've got heavy summer traffic going through, maybe it's part of that.

Karen Plum:

Absolutely yes.

Richard Lupo:

So there are other pollutants and maybe you've got something coming in from the sea or Sahara dust or something like that, so it does all contribute.

Karen Plum:

Yeah, yeah, definitely. We've had some of that too. So interesting to hear you talk about all of these. And then I guess there's food security.

Richard Lupo:

That's something that we all take for granted, don't we food, and you don't really think about food security. But luckily in the UK we are blessed with supplies of food. Other countries aren't so blessed, but the Economist Global Food Security Index is the most authoritative data I could get hold of on that. It does class us as something near just about 80% food secure. So sounds pretty good, but it should be 100%. And a big chunk of why we're not 100% is due to climate change and the human impacts on the natural sphere and the ecosystems, and that's leading to things like crop failures elsewhere in the world that we rely on for importing our food. War in Ukraine, grain, the Arab spring risings were partially due to four years of successive crop failures. And on top of the actual crop failures you've also got the transportation of the crops from where they're grown to us might be affected by climate change.

Karen Plum:

And contribute to climate change, because if we're shipping things halfway across the world, then we're transporting them, aren't we?

Richard Lupo:

Sure, I don't want to get too doom and gloom, because the corollary of all of that is we can create a vision. These are the gaps. This is what good looks like. We can create a vision such that we do, as humans, have secure shelter, secure water supply, secure food and secure air.

Karen Plum:

Just before we move on, the terms water security and food security, they're terms that we never talked about years ago. What do we mean by security? Is this about self-sufficiency?

Richard Lupo:

Well, I'm a great fan of Maslow and his hierarchy of needs, and so you'll remember that security is the second layer up from the basic needs. So I would like to think that we mean security of supply of our basic needs to live as humans, whether that comes from self-sufficiency or from importing, is neither here nor there, so long as we do it sustainably. What matters is that we do do it.

Karen Plum:

Yeah, and again, as somebody living in the South West who's been living through a hose pipe ban and you know, seen food shortages in shops, suffered through the heat waves the same as everybody else has, floods in local areas watching on the news, people shoveling red mud out of their homes.

Richard Lupo:

Oh yeah, we had a two-week period last year where we had - drought, floods and a heat wave.

Karen Plum:

And a few years ago, a plague. So it really does seem that the incidence of these things is really amassing, doesn't it?

Richard Lupo:

I don't think we can put the plague down to climate change, though.

Karen Plum:

Well, no, no, no, but you know, plague, pestilence and all that sort of stuff. It does seem that things are gathering and of course, with the heat has come fires.

Richard Lupo:

Yeah, there's massive wave of fires on the wall around the world. So the effects of that are massive. Lots of carbon dioxide being released into the air, massive particulates being released into the air and we're burning down our ability to reabsorb all of those carbon emissions. So, yeah, not least the biodiversity effects, the recreational benefits, the whole benefits of woodland.

Karen Plum:

Yeah, however, before we get too depressed.

Richard Lupo:

Don't get depressed. There's an opportunity for a vision here!

Karen Plum:

Absolutely yes, and there's lots we can do, and lots that we as individuals can do, lots that organizations can do. So let's turn our attention to some of the examples and ideas and thought leadership that came out of the event. We had a number of case studies and some sustainability folks in the audience taking part in discussions, so I'd like to invite the three of you to talk through some of the examples that we heard about. We know that, in terms of emissions, there are different types of emissions. The so-called Scope 1 emissions are direct emissions, ones that are owned or controlled by the company. So if it runs a fleet of vehicles, then it's all about those delivery vehicles and the sorts of fossil fuels that they're burning. So what examples did we have from our case studies, from our audience, in terms of tackling some of those direct emissions? Lara, I think you had a couple of examples.

Lara Al Ansari:

I think incentivising is a great way to promote desired behaviours. So, for example, if you wanted to promote greener modes of travel, one of our case study speakers spoke about a bike scheme in their organization wherein if you were to travel by bike to a client's office, you'd be able to get reimbursed for the mileage, just like you would if you were driving a car. So I think it's great. It feels like a win-win situation where you're able to get out, get a workout in and get paid for it. It's brilliant!

Karen Plum:

Absolutely, and I've heard other organizations giving people loans to buy bikes, so it's sort of capturing that opportunity, isn't it, to allow people to do something a bit different?

Richard Lupo:

The typical things are, if you've got a gas boiler in the office, changing that to a more efficient one, although that's a bit fraught because it might not align with net zero plans. But right immediately, that's what you can do. Turning things off. Driving less. Shifting from gas forms of heating to efficient electric forms of heating and I'm talking heat pumps, if you can get them. One that if you operate a fleet, probably a lot of people do this anyway but the fleet metrics that you can monitor where the fleet is going and how quickly and how much fuel they use, and start benchmarking each down to vehicle level, and that can be quite effective as well.

Karen Plum:

Yeah. Have we heard of any organizations moving to electric vehicles for company car fleets, or anything like that?

Richard Lupo:

Yeah, there's quite a few doing it and there was a big chunk of it was due to some very beneficial tax efficiencies, I think last year or the year before, for their staff to get electric vehicles. In my world some people are toying with the idea of maintenance fleet vans turning into electric, but they're not quite there yet. There's a small proportion. It's analyzing your fleet seeing, okay, not all of them can be electric right now, but there's these small vans that only do 30 miles a day. Let's get those onto electric.

Brad Taylor:

We had an example of one organization there that had seen a marked increase in their staff using electric vehicles, from something like 60 a few years ago to 600 now and I think again, that's an example of both the organization being proactive in having those sort of vehicles, there amongst all the others that can be selected, so people aren't feeling forced into doing it, but they're actually making a positive choice to do it as well as, obviously, the tax benefits, but also, I think, people thinking actually, what can I do?

Brad Taylor:

Oh, here's an opportunity for me to make a difference, and my employer is supporting me doing that.

Karen Plum:

Brilliant. So if we turn to the other forms of emissions, so the so-called Scope 2 and 3, the indirect emissions, ones that occur as a consequence of the company's activities, the way it does business, but occur from sources outside of their direct control. So perhaps you know the fossil fuels used to generate the power that they use in their buildings or the use of products from suppliers. Again, I think back to you, Lara, you were telling me about some nudging that one of our case study examples was talking about.

Lara Al Ansari:

I think nudging is a great way to promote more sustainable habits in the workplace. So one of our case study speakers mentioned having more plant based options available and easily accessible at lunchtimes and I've seen this done with other clients as well where plant based options aren't presented as secondary options, but rather they're the first item on the menu, they're front and center and they look really appealing too. But the key thing here is it's not forced upon you. You can absolutely go for a meal with meat or a non plant based meal if you wish, but because it's so easily accessible, you think, well, why not? And I've seen this myself when I've gone into client offices, where plant based meals were available, I found myself opting to eat a plant based meal, and I don't necessarily follow a plant based diet. So I think nudging is a gentle yet effective way of encouraging more planet friendly habits in the workplace.

Karen Plum:

And, using that example, Richard, what's that going to do for our emissions? For the emissions, those indirect emissions, that the company is essentially amassing through their change in what they're offering to people?

Richard Lupo:

Yeah, well, it's a question of scale. But just to clarify - Scope 2 you can more directly influence because that's the electricity that you use and you're right its, the carbon is emitted at the power station. So you can't do lots to reduce your electricity. And we had some great case study there. The solar panel roll out on all their properties. And my takeaway from that one there was a three year payback on the solar panels. They've done really well there. I'd normally bank on a six year, but three year payback just goes to show what's possible on the electricity.

Richard Lupo:

And then the nudging example. Again, it's all a question of scale. The stats I've seen scratching them from the back of my head. It might sort of impact about 5% of our emissions totally. Obviously, fruit isn't an electricity or anything like that. But there's a whole load of carbon emissions associated with non plant based diet. So anybody going on to the plant based diet. So if you were I don't know a restaurateur with just total plant based and your all your supply chain was the food, then that would have a big impact. But if you were a canteen and a staff office that does lots of other things, like a power station and that's gonna have a minimal impact, so it's question of scale.

Karen Plum:

And the solar panel example - so this is an organization that's putting solar panels on all of its offices. Again, as someone who's installed solar panels this year, I'm now obsessed with with monitoring, you know if the sun's shining, I'm looking at my app. How much is being generated? Is that going into my battery? How fast is my battery filling up? It really does focus and concentrate a bit more when, when you use your energy.

Richard Lupo:

Absolutely. Yeah, you, you definitely know. I mean we put our dishwasher on when the light's shining. Even if we packed it when it's dark, then that put it on the timer to come in in the morning. So yeah, it does. It can affect your little behaviors here, definitely.

Karen Plum:

I'm just wondering whether the ability to install solar panels on your building is restricted in terms of whether you own the building or whether you lease the building?

Richard Lupo:

Now, that I don't think there's any hard and fast rules and they'll be based on the tendencies, about what the agreement is and how it goes back. But there were some really good, interesting example about a way to negotiate yourself between the landlord and tenant, so both parties benefit from that installation of the solar panel or any other investment kit. And I thought that was really innovative, myself because you've got the tenant, they want to reduce their bills, you've got the landlord who doesn't want to touch their building for fear of it being broken and, yeah. S o I thought it's quite an innovative way to share the cost and benefits as well.

Karen Plum:

Absolutely. It's interesting you think about the damage that can be done when the installers are working. One of the first questions they asked us was have you got any spare roof tiles? Because down the road one of our neighbors they've broken 18 of his, just because it was a different pitch to ours and it was more difficult to walk about on it without damaging it. B ut anyway. So back to you, Lara, I think you had another example about one of the case study organizations encouraging staff to look at their own energy efficiency at home.

Lara Al Ansari:

Yeah, so another great initiative mentioned by one of our case study speakers was that they were offering staff subsidized energy efficiency assessments at home, to help them explore options. And it's really interesting because it feels as though sustainability initiatives in this area are quite limited. They don't always extend into the home and, you know, with the way we're currently working and I don't see, you know, working from home ever going away, organizations who have sustainability goals or want to be net zero will have to consider the impact of working from home in the equation.

Karen Plum:

Richard, is this going to be a part of how organizations' emissions are calculated in the future? If they've got people working from their homes, are they going to have to start accounting for those emissions as well as those from their offices?

Richard Lupo:

Now we're into the Scope 3 emissions. So the Scope 1 and Scope 2, the rules about reporting those are pretty much established and there's not really much gray area. But Scope 3 is everything else and there is lots and lots of gray areas and lots of ways of doing it. So at the minute it's a choice whether an organization will include their working from home emissions and I guess it's a scale thing as well. So if you're an organization I'm thinking of something, they weren't at the event but there was another FM consultancy they don't have an office, they rely on their 600 staff working from home.

Richard Lupo:

That is a significant Scope 3. So that I would suggest would be remiss of them if they didn't report that. But for a lot of organizations, where I work for, their Scope 3 emissions are colossal, excluding working from home. So for that it's perhaps less so, less so important or less so material is the word to use. So it's a question of deciding whether they're working from home emissions are material.

Karen Plum:

And I guess to your point about whether those Scope 3, working from home emissions are material, you know, if you've downsized your office portfolio on the basis of having people working from home, it'd be hard to argue that they weren't part of your overall emissions profile. Clearly, for most organizations, I guess, a sustainability agenda is part of corporate strategy. But how do we go about embedding the ideals and the practices that will get us to net zero for our organizations, into corporate culture?

Brad Taylor:

I mean, it's really about bringing people along on the journey, Karen. So it does play heavily into the type of culture that you have in an organization, because the first thing that that will go through people's heads is well, why do I need to change what's actually happening here? So you know, if you want change to happen, you need an organization where you have people who want to change; that everyone has an understanding of what good looks like, and that's a clear and consistent understanding of what good looks like. There needs to be a clear plan of action so people know what's the organization going to do and what's my part in making that happen? And then, of course, all that's surrounded by great communication. So there's dialogue going on within the organization about those initiatives. So culture matters, because people in organizations are grappling with so many conflicting priorities all the time and what they're trying to do is to sift through all of that to understand, what does leadership really want me to do here?

Brad Taylor:

I know there's things that they have to say. Do they mean it? You know so we talk about sales opportunities and competitors. We're talking about sustainability. We're talking about belonging and inclusion. All of these things matter. Where's leadership placing the emphasis? So leadership needs to be quite thoughtful about how they're presenting the culture and how they're placing the weighting on all of these things, because they all matter.

Brad Taylor:

Secondly, leadership behaviors matter a lot. So do I see my leader behaving in the way that they are talking to me about? Are they doing it themselves? How do they help me understand what the right information is, because there is so much that comes out that later on we learn oh, actually that was incorrect information. I've been doing something now that perhaps I shouldn't have been doing.

Brad Taylor:

So does the organization have a clear position on - this is what good looks like, and these are the things that we want you to be doing. And also, therefore, how do you develop that relationship that gives you the right, as your employer, to tell me how to live my life? Because the organizations that do this really well, people wouldn't actually take that into their home lives as well. If something's good, good for us and it's good for the organization, it's probably gonna be good for our families and our home lives as well. So getting that right can actually have a hugely beneficial impact. But if your culture doesn't work because you've got something where people are scared to speak up, or if they make mistakes, the comebacks are quite severe. Then they're not going to be with you in taking risks or trying new things out, for fear of if those sort of things go wrong.

Karen Plum:

Yes, because all of those changes could be beneficial, but they're probably all going to come at some sort of a cost to me as an individual, whether that's a monetary cost or an opportunity cost or whatever it is.

Brad Taylor:

That's right and we talked a lot also in the event about, and it's a model that we use a lot at AWA, as you're probably well aware, this rational, emotional engagement model. So if we're asking people to change, do they have a clear, rational understanding of what the change looks like, the who, what, where, how, when all of those things are going to happen? But are they engaged in the success of the outcome of the change as well, so that they see their part in it and they see the benefit of playing a part and making that happen? And we need those two things in tandem working really, really well so that we get people into that advocate what we call an advocate stage of making change happen, where I'm really clear about what it is and what's being asked of me and how we're going to do it. I'm clear of the organizational strategy for doing it and who I can go to for help and I see how my part in it can really make a difference and I feel motivated to want to make a change. So that's, all of those things make a huge impact. So to get that right, organizations have got to have that very clear case for change. This is why we need to do it.

Brad Taylor:

So, to be clear to people, it's not just about money. Yeah, I'm sure money will play a huge part. You know we talked earlier on about tax incentives. Consumers may not want to buy from an organization that they perceive is not sustainable or environmentally friendly. It needs to go beyond that as well. There needs to be that hearts and minds thing that people are seeing from leadership that says our planet matters, the environments in which we operate matter, society matters to us. So therefore, we're going to do some positive things to make sure that we're playing our part in a wider ecosystem that's going to be successful, and that's the type of thing that fires people up. That's the sort of thing that says I work for this organization I'm proud to, because this is the impact we're having on society and the world.

Karen Plum:

And in creating that culture, that joined up approach, we need the different functions within the organization to be collaborating to deliver a united approach to the staff. So functions like FM, real estate, HR, IT, all got to play their part.

Brad Taylor:

Absolutely every part, every function holds like a lens into the jigsaw puzzle. You know HR can play a huge role in helping leadership and other functions understand this - this is how humans operate. This is what motivates and incentivizes people. These are the things that perhaps, within the culture that could be damaging to us. But likewise there are a lot of complicated terms and statistics and numbers that you know people like finance functions will understand, or the FM and real estate people will understand because they're closer to it. So having them all come together and then working to articulate these things in ways that people can consume and feel that they can do something positive about, and be able to report on these things in ways that people can see a marked difference and know what corrective actions they need to take, really does matter. So that sense of unity across the organization.

Karen Plum:

Yeah, we're all on this journey together.

Richard Lupo:

I wanted to ask Brad you mentioned you know, if people have got, if they pick up good habits in work and it works well at work, do they bring it back to the home? I wonder what your thoughts are on whether, if they've got good things at home like Karen, you've installed the solar panel, can that be brought to work?

Brad Taylor:

That's a really good point, Richard, because I think actually a lot of the time people do see things that they do at home that they think is really good. If only my employer did this as well. You know, it might be certain types of technology often as well. People will often say my laptop at home works better than my one at work. So I think there are practices that people have and it could be dietary and it could be how they interact and socialize with one another all of those sort of things. I think what organizations need to be good at doing is enabling people to do that and bring those things into the environment. You know we talk a lot about six factors of effective teams and a lot of those factors play into it in terms of great communication, communicating across other teams as well.

Richard Lupo:

Yeah, because my book is written directed at the home but mainly, you know, there's loads of tips on environmental stuff and all that. But it's also an idea to get any idea over that achieving wellbeing is something measurable and there are things you can do and the environmental protection is a big part of that wellbeing, because without food and water and air and shelter, we can forget about going on holiday.

Brad Taylor:

And you're right, I think to relate it to Maslow's hierarchy of needs, because, you're absolutely right, all of those things matter and I think once people get excited about something, you know, if your book, if it's playing into the home audience and people get enthusiastic, excited, it's just natural that they're going to want to talk to other people about it. And you know, organizations are terrific places for things like that to catch on.

Karen Plum:

I think Brad's spot on, as he often is, and every opportunity, conversation and shared experience moves us closer to a future where sustainability isn't a tick box exercise, but it's the result of collaboration between organizations and their people, weaving it into the culture. As my colleague Monique said, it's a future where businesses take responsibility for their environmental impact and work collectively to create a more sustainable world. I'd like to thank my guests, Richard Lupo, Lara Al Ansari and Brad Taylor for sharing some of the learning from the Beyond Green event. I hope we've given you some inspiration and ideas that can spread and develop in your business. If now isn't the time to embed sustainability and net zero into the core of business strategy and culture, then I seriously don't know when it ever will be, because time really is running out for our planet. If you'd like to hear future episodes of the DNA of work, just follow or like the show. You can contact us on our website, advanced-workplace. com. Thank you so much for listening. See you next time. Goodbye.