The document summarizes discussions from a GreenBiz23 workshop on employee engagement strategies for sustainability. Key points from breakout groups are presented in a question and answer format covering topics like education, community building, and impact measurement for different employee groups. Challenges discussed include the need to make sustainability training mandatory, building cross-collaboration, incentivizing action, measuring impact, and addressing high turnover in some frontline roles.

1. GreenBiz23 Readout: Leveling up Your
Employee Engagement Strategy
Following the interactive workshop at Greenbiz23 on February 17th
2023 the speakers have compiled
learnings from their industry focused table groups and shared out highlights below. The intended
audience for this report out is participants from the workshop so they can leverage these insights directly
in their company’s internal stakeholder engagement work. If you have any questions about this report
kindly follow up with Kati Kallins (ktkallins@meta.com)
PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
Education: What education and awareness is required to help employees understand their role in your
company’s sustainability efforts and take action?
Summary: Mandatory training is key for both new hires and existing staff. Education must move from
optional programming for enthusiasts (green teams) to all staff, showing how sustainability integrates
with the business. And, what it means to everyone – no matter what their function, each employee must
understand why we are asking them to learn and change behavior and why it is important for the
business.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Travel scenarios
calculators
- Travel tip website
- Sustainability 101
(mandatory vs.
optional)
- Basic, mandatory
onboarding training
- E-learning training of
company’s climate
strategy
- Inspiration sessions
(guest speakers doing
amazing work)
- Lunch & learns
- Move from
extracurricular
programs to
business-integrated
- Varying levels of
sustainability education
- Moving from education
to action
- Closing the “why”
gap/why is it important
to me, to the business?
- Need
education/awareness
that is broad but
specific
- Balancing engagement
for
internal/external-facing
employees (groups with
different objectives and
behaviors)
- Employees on client
sites without access to
company tools
1

2. Community Building: How to build an engaged community of employees who will drive sustainability
goals forward and ground it into the company culture? How to frame up why they should care about this
important and terrifying issue?
Summary: Cross-collaboration with other groups (ERGs, community groups) is a strategic way to increase
awareness and harness shared goals that can be moved to action. Toolkits and leadership support help
keep volunteer green team leaders motivated. Passion of new hires, Gen Z, and long-time enthusiasts
can help move things forward, provided they feel progress is being made. Incentivizing action can help
bring along those who aren’t as passionate. Framing as part of company values/commitment is a way to
explain the ‘why’.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Offer sustainability
small group discussions
- Green team toolkit,
website, advisory group
- Integrate into
professional goals
- Physical reminders
(signage for recycling,
food waste, energy
conservation)
- Bringing engagement
opportunities to
employees, i.e. let them
get involved
-
- Build climate into new
hire onboarding
- ERGs/green teams that
are recognized by senior
leadership
- New hires/Gen Z
- Cross-collaboration with
ERGs and other
community groups
- Harnessing excitement
and passion that is
unique to
environmental
enthusiasts
- Incentivize action
- Engage C-suite as
drivers of the goals and
expectations
- Connect with other
business units i.e.
finance, research; show
how mutual goals can
be achieved
- Translating climate goals
to quarterly metrics
- Hybrid work
- Asking internal
resources to do more
with same or less
resources
- Turnover and personal
beliefs
- Community becoming
frustrated with the pace
at which the business is
moving
- Risk challenges
Alignment & Impact Measurement: How do you measure employee engagement to assess the impact of
this stakeholder group? How do you balance supporting advanced advocates vs. basic employees?
Summary: Measuring success is challenging. Success stories and pictures are often more impactful and
interesting for leadership, employees and clients. For objectives like travel reduction, travel analysis
down to the individual is best, with opportunity to target personal outreach to top emitters. Targeting
key account teams for discussion one by one can be slow but effective.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
2

3. - Metrics: number of
attendees at events,
newsletter reach, waste
and recycling
- Travel analysis down to
the individual; outreach
to top 25 travelers
- Pictures and stories of
success
- Commuting survey
- Train the trainer
sessions
- Comms integration
- Advisory groups made
of of execs
- Target account teams
- Leadership support
- Measurement quality
- Funding for programs
- Covid depleted teams;
having to start over
Shop Floor/Hospitality
Education: What education and awareness is required to help employees understand their role in your
company’s sustainability efforts and take action?
Summary: Education and training must be specific to the role and tasks of employees on the frontlines of
their company’s manufacturing or hospitality operations. This is challenging in an environment where
there is high turnover and a wide range of languages and cultures. This is compounded where these
employees are part of a union which requires them to be paid in order to participate in training efforts.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Existing online platform
available to all voluntary
and mandatory training
- On site monitors
- Online training to use
our environmental
tracking platform (only
required for a couple
team members across
each property)
- Programming to help
plant and operations
employees understand
connection between
their work and
sustainability efforts
- Interactive training
during onboarding
- Company culture
shift/continual
resilience
- Training: upper-level
management being the
guide
- Incentivize or gamify
voluntary programs
- Culturally specific
programming
- Level of detail and
granularity according to
employee type/role
- Language barriers,
especially with
temporary labor
- Finding time to engage
for hourly employees
outside of workhours.
- Shopfloor employees
don’t have computers
or smart phones,
therefore hard to reach
- Many conflicting
priorities
- High turnover
- Many union employees
must be paid to take
any training
3

4. Community Building: How to build an engaged community of employees who will drive sustainability
goals forward and ground it into the company culture? How to frame up why they should care about this
important and terrifying issue?
Summary: Efforts need to be built both bottom-up (green teams, ERG’s) as well as top-down (utilize shift
meetings and manager communication). It’s important to meet the employees “where they’re at” and
use language that is meaningful to them. Rather than creating an ERG for environment, take
sustainability initiatives to the different ERG’s.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Green
teams/ambassadors
- Tie sustainability goals
to STI and other
incentive programs
- Portals to sign up for
volunteering
- Build internal
engagement rooted in
authenticity.
- Use shift meetings (15
minutes before each
shift to talk about
critical topics)
- Take two’s: two minutes
to discuss sustainability.
- Find ambassadors
within the business.
- Create and maintain
multi-channel and
consistent engagement
strategies
- Partner with
“influencers” within the
organization who have
alignment with
sustainability goals to
help carry the message
- Volunteering
opportunities bring
like-minded employees
together outside of the
work environment
- Engage C-suite about
hiring young employees
- Sustainability takes
education – hard to
empower employees at
large
- Lack of team
building/communication
from upper level on
sustainable evolution
- Many silos in operations
without a “key” leader
within one location
- Generational difference
Alignment & Impact Measurement: How do you measure employee engagement to assess the impact of
this stakeholder group? How do you balance supporting advanced advocates vs. basic employees?
Summary: Measurement is always a challenges. While surveys are useful, they are often controlled by
HR and it is difficult to reach all employees. Volunteering hours are trackable but things like beach
cleanups don’t necessarily connect with the company’s sustainability goals. Incentives can play a big role
in engagement as one participant used an $800 Yeti cooler at each plant as a collector of written
suggestions and ideas. They randomly drew the winner but then reviewed all of the other submissions to
4

5. see which ones could be implemented. Initiatives that were implemented were also rewarded and
recognized.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Focused goal areas
down to ERGs, try to
measure results of
engagement
- Measure employee
engagement as an
iterative exercise,
focusing on scalable
wins
- Internal channels that
allow groups to give
feedback/ask questions
about environmental
sustainability
- Tracking hours of
employee volunteering
- Maintain email lists,
send consistently, track
clicks
- Build sustainability as
part of personal
performance metric in
key roles
- Gallup
- Internal customer
satisfaction survey
- Colleague group surveys
- Paid volunteer time
- Leverage advanced
advocate
communications
channels to increase
engagement
- Host more events at
work
- Educate smaller groups
and trust them to
spread the word
- Surveys and meetings
checking on employee
engagement and
offering solutions
- Volunteering isn’t
connected to our core
sustainability metrics
- Diversity isn’t
acknowledged
Food Service: Retail/Consumer Facing
Education: What education and awareness is required to help employees understand their role in your
company’s sustainability efforts and take action?
Summary: Having both easy to digest information through consistent communications and deeper
educational platforms are both important to reach all levels of employees. Sometimes it is easy to
constantly communicate initiatives, but employees need to understand WHY it should matter to them.
Celebrating employees when they do take action is important. A big challenge is limited time and
capacity with employees dealing with the day to day in their jobs. Employees are unaware of what the
company is doing but do not have time to learn.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
5

6. - Texts/Company App
- Onboarding training
- Short form videos
- Internal educational
platforms/modules
- Cause and impact
tracking platforms with
quantifiable data
- Clear and succinct
messaging for granular
level understanding
- Connect to WHY -Why
does this matter to
employees?
- Integration into full
employee journey not
only small moments
- Store based challenges
and healthy
competitions with
rewards
- Celebrate individual and
collective wins and
highlighting what
employees are doing
- Consistent updates on
company’s progress
towards goals
- Volunteer time off
across business
- Lack of buy-in or
understanding of
initiatives or goals
- Finding time to deliver
training with effective
delivery methods
- Corporate vs. front line
employee mentality
- Competing priorities
- Limited time from
employees; concerns
about ERG and
volunteer activities
conflicting with work;
limited capacity to build
longer term thinking
- Our employees are not
aware of goals or how
they can help
Community Building: How to build an engaged community of employees who will drive sustainability
goals forward and ground it into the company culture? How to frame up why they should care about this
important and terrifying issue?
Summary: ERGs are a fantastic way to build an engaged community of employees. The highly engaged
are ready to help drive interest, they just need the information and tools to support. Executives should
lead by example by being part of these communities and using the tools/resources that the company
provides. Employees want localized opportunities. Additionally, they should be encouraged to activate
on their personal passions and not feel like they need to boil the ocean. A big opportunity is to offer days
of service or volunteer time off. A challenge is that sustainability work takes time and it sometimes feel
like there is a lack of outcomes.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Days of service that
allow employees to
come together w/
like-minded individuals
- Use the highly engaged
to drive interest and
curiosity
- Employee dashboards
- Events (sustainability
market, festival,
educational, etc.)
- Regionally specific
programming
(townhalls)
- Lead by example, have
executives in
communities (ERGs)
- Provide localized
opportunities to engage
with local causes
- Activate on personal
passions – do not try to
boil the ocean
- Framing it up as too
complex, not easy
enough to integrate into
day to day
- How to get regular
cadence of materials to
ERGs w/ limited
capacity on both ends
- Turnover is high and
maintaining culture and
momentum is difficult
- Lack of immediate
reward or positive
outcome for
sustainability initiatives
6

7. - ERGs
Alignment & Impact Measurement: How do you measure employee engagement to assess the impact of
this stakeholder group? How do you balance supporting advanced advocates vs. basic employees?
Summary: There should be entry points for all employees in every part of their journey with the
company. Engaged individuals should be rewarded and celebrated. Impact can be measured by cause
and impact tracking platforms, ERG members and event participation, tool usage, comms metrics, and
more! An opportunity is for leaders to integrate sustainability into goal setting that is measured against.
A challenge to measuring impact is that sustainability is only one piece of an organization and the entire
system affects how employees feel about the impact happening.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Event participation
- Activation participation
- ERG members
- Data from impact
tracking platforms
- Tool usage
- Comms metrics
- Rewarding engaged
individuals
- Use data in
communications
- Encourage leaders to
integrate sustainability
into goal setting
- Building habits for
employees that are
uninterested
- The entire system
affects impact
measurement, how are
employees feeling with
other company
initiatives?
Manufacturing & Distribution
Education: What education and awareness is required to help employees understand their role in your
company’s sustainability efforts and take action?
Summary: In many of our organizations, large portions of the teams are literally at “What is ESG?” and
“Why should I care about this?”. Additionally, we noted that there is evolving and often mixed
messaging about what things are or what terms mean. Mixed messaging often comes when internal
messaging doesn’t totally align with something in the general media.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Bootcamps
- Lunch & Learns
- Short ESG Videos
- Reward Programs
- New Employee
Onboardng
- Shop Floor
Ambassadors
- Sustainability 101 & 201
-
- Stratification of msgs
- Connecting Corp Goals
to front line teams.
- No Computer Access
- Global Differences
- Union Requirements
7

8. - Connecting outside the
main corp offices to
blue collar teams.
Community Building: How to build an engaged community of employees who will drive sustainability
goals forward and ground it into the company culture? How to frame up why they should care about this
important and terrifying issue?
Summary: Collectively our table felt the primary challenge was establishing trust within the org beyond
the core sustainability champions. This is especially true with front line shop floor team members. The
primary opportunity was in building trust with those teams and providing real world results that can be
related to.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Gamefication - Include ESG within the
department level
planning processes.
- Create awareness
through their “Switch
Off the Machines”
process (every shift).
- Competitive
Frameworks for
competition
- Climathons
- Connecting Company &
Personal Goals
- Building Trust in Blue
Collar teams.
- Need more Real World
Examples
Alignment & Impact Measurement: How do you measure employee engagement to assess the impact of
this stakeholder group? How do you balance supporting advanced advocates vs. basic employees?
Summary: It’s really difficult to measure. We struggle to even get engagement. Integrating
sustainability concepts into safety training might be a good intersection point. Definitely need to meet
our team members where they are. Often that means lunch and learns, tablets in common spaces, etc.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Online Surveys direct to
team members.
- Online Surveys to shop
floor teams via Tablets
in break areas.
- Convert old employee
cell phones to trees
planted
- Need to do a better job
of sharing survey
results.
- Must educate while “on
the clock”
- Simple Incentives work
(ie presos at free lunch)
- Sustainability teams
need to spend more
time on the shop floor.
- Training Tracking
- In Person Training needs
because no computers.
8

9. - Celebrate and share
more
- Legitimately gather
ideas for sustainability
improvements out on
the floor.
Technology
Education: What education and awareness is required to help employees understand their role in your
company’s sustainability efforts and take action?
Summary: Providing employees access to self-taught learning modules is a great way to improve
engagement if your team hasn’t developed an internal sustainability course yet (eg. Drawdown, Climate
Reality Project). Think through content from a lens of material climate topics (ie Net Zero goal) but also
what is most visible to employees (ie recycling/water bottles), how can your education relate to an
employee’s daily life at the company? Making the content role specific and/or department specific will
help employees see their specific opportunities in the company’s climate work and reduce the
perception that you don’t need a climate PhD to participate.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Explainer for scope
1,2,3 emissions
- Mandatory training and
voluntary info sessions
- Onboarding Training
- Build a group of
internal champions
- Climate guide to work
by Project Drawdown
- Clarity on specific
actions or behaviors
that support
sustainability KPIs +
then tools to see
progress
- Short ESG Videos
- Training on what is
sustainability
- Seeking technical
details “looking under
the hood”
- Climate models for
employees
- Events led by
sustainability teams
- Role based things that
each employee can do
- Hands on fun events
with gifts + food
- Culture + values need
to align
- How their
job/department
impacts our footprint
and environmental
efforts
- Reaching all employees
- Linking sustainability
efforts to day to day of
employees
- Different levels of
pre-existing education
and personal action
- Most employees don’t
have a role to play in our
most important
initiatives – should we
focus on less important
initiatives just to engage
employees more?
- Drawing the
lines/dots/understanding
the intersection of their
day to day work or not
and how it can support
the company’s
sustainability efforts
9

10. Community Building: How to build an engaged community of employees who will drive sustainability
goals forward and ground it into the company culture? How to frame up why they should care about this
important and terrifying issue?
Summary: Building and sustaining a community of engaged employees when you have both a highly
technical audience (eg software engineers) and broader community focused employees is a constant
challenge. With tech employees though you build trust through transparency and sharing data firsthand.
Create collective goals that identify their SME skills and allow them to be utilized.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Hackathons
- Green Awards
- Recognition (Internal +
External)
- Spark Points
- Pitch competitions for
execs
- Donation Rewards
- Connect activities to
business goals
- Set goals with
employees and hold
their executive
accountable
- Treat them like the
SMEs that they are for
their area of
responsibility – engage,
ask questions
- Bottom up ideas vs top
down
- Find internal champions
- Create collective goals
- Sync emotional
connection and add
clear ways to contribute
- Remote/hybrid work
- Takes energy to manage
- “Going Rouge”
- Company priorities
(growth) in opposition
to sustainability goals
- Creating programs
aligned with company
purpose and
sustainability
Alignment & Impact Measurement: How do you measure employee engagement to assess the impact of
this stakeholder group? How do you balance supporting advanced advocates vs. basic employees?
Summary: Engagement metrics are always a bit tough but measure, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t
try. Member of community green teams and event participation is a good place to start. Providing
opportunities for employees to be “high touch” engaged (eg leading an event) and “low touch” engaged
(eg reading a newsletter, attending a lunch’n’learn) is vital for meeting people where they are at with
these complex topics. Aligning your leadership team to this work so they can publicly discuss the work
alongside company goals and help reinforce it’s importance and maintain engagement.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Newsletters - Build ambassadors
across key business
units
- Slack channel
meltdowns (internal
10

11. - Benevity measure
employee actions and
impact
- Different depth of
communication/resources
to engage employees
across the organization
- Charitable giving helping
people understand the
environmental impact on
E, S, and we are
connected
- Employee spotlights in
impact report and embed
in existing volunteering
program
- Survey? Varying levels
of projects with
different commitment
levels
- Empower highly
engaged employees to
bring in others
- Vision: At least 1
champion on every
team at the company
- Tie to business
objectives
- Decide on KPIs with
cross functional
teams/ green teams/
etc. This helps level
set and provide
common goals
circular
arguments/discussions)
- Defining north start
metric for engagement
to begin with
- To create an effective
tool for reputation and
reporting and
Consumer Packaged Goods/Consumer-facing
Education: What education and awareness is required to help employees understand their role in your
company’s sustainability efforts and take action?
Summary: Having both easy to digest information through consistent communications and deeper
educational platforms are both important to reach all levels of employees. Sometimes it is easy to
constantly communicate initiatives, but employees need to understand WHY it should matter to them.
Celebrating employees when they do take action is important. A big challenge is limited time and
capacity with employees dealing with the day to day in their jobs. Employees are unaware of what the
company is doing but do not have time to learn.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Sustainability portal;
include relevant case
studies
- MS Teams collaboration
site
- Workshops/training
with external
consultants and
sustainability subject
matter experts; develop
a sustainability core
curriculum
- Demonstrate how
individual
roles/positions can
influence and support
corporate sustainability
objectives
- Start with WHY; clearly
articulate why
employees should
care/engage
- Clearly articulate
corporate
accomplishments,
- Employee follow
through on training or
attendance at events;
difficult to find time on
top of other competing
priorities
- Striking the right
balance related to the
level of information
shared to keep
employees engaged
11

12. - Printed/video training,
which can be
self-directed
- Meetings where
management engages
with employees,
including front line
workers
demonstrating the
company is serious
about sustainability
- Provide employees with
time off to volunteer
outside of work
- Provide opportunities to
engage in trade
associations and NGOs
where collaboration
within and across
industries occurs
Community Building: How to build an engaged community of employees who will drive sustainability
goals forward and ground it into the company culture? How to frame up why they should care about this
important and terrifying issue?
Summary: ERGs are a fantastic way to build an engaged community of employees. The highly engaged
are ready to help drive interest, they just need the information and tools to support. Executives should
lead by example by being part of these communities and using the tools/resources that the company
provides. Employees want localized opportunities. Additionally, they should be encouraged to activate
on their personal passions and not feel like they need to boil the ocean. A big opportunity is to offer days
of service or volunteer time off. A challenge is that sustainability work takes time and it sometimes feel
like there is a lack of outcomes.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Make it fun; create
games/competitions
- Integrate into standard
meetings and events
- Measurement and
tracking tools, which
allow employees to
clearly see progress
- Connect to employee
goals, reviews and
compensation;
incentivize with rewards
- Create an employee
ERG related to
sustainability
- Rotate sustainability
champions in different
functional
groups/businesses to
avoid burnout and keep
teams engaged
- Allow employees to
share how sustainability
has been integrated into
their role through
panels
- Consider setting up
online communities
- Develop a robust
communication plan
including successes,
accomplishments, and
future opportunities for
engagement
- Relating corporate goals
and achievements to
individual roles in a way
that employees can
see/appreciate their
direct impact
12

13. Alignment & Impact Measurement: How do you measure employee engagement to assess the impact of
this stakeholder group? How do you balance supporting advanced advocates vs. basic employees?
Summary: There should be entry points for all employees in every part of their journey with the
company. Engaged individuals should be rewarded and celebrated. Impact can be measured by cause
and impact tracking platforms, ERG members and event participation, tool usage, comms metrics, and
more! An opportunity is for leaders to integrate sustainability into goal setting that is measured against.
A challenge to measuring impact is that sustainability is only one piece of an organization and the entire
system affects how employees feel about the impact happening.
Tools Opportunities Challenges
- Trackers, surveys,
reports related to goals
achievement and
participation in
meetings and events
- Shared/published
success stories
- MS Teams sites to share
the above, as well as
other mechanisms
- Include sustainability in
employee engagement
surveys
- Include sustainability
objectives in leadership
and employee annual
goals
- We engaged in a related
conversation and did
not include any post-its
notes for this section;
we discussed the
importance of creating
stories allowing
employees and other
stakeholders to clearly
visualize the impact the
company and specific
activities are having
13