A guide to change management for sustainability
Organizational change management for sustainability is challenging but possible when framed properly for both leadership and employees.
For sustainability and ESG professionals, change management is a major part of guiding organizations through taking climate action.
While at times it may seem like a losing battle, it’s possible to effect change when it's framed in a way that speaks to top leadership, as well as the rest of the workforce. Before they make meaningful changes to their behaviors and processes, leaders, managers and employees must understand why incorporating sustainability into a business is important and how it enables companies to thrive.
"The number one thing that a sustainability professional needs to do to drive change is to anchor the sustainability goal in business value," said Christine Yeager, founder of CSY Impact Consulting, a Golden, Colo.-based firm that focuses on environmental and social impact.
The steps toward change
Change management for sustainability can happen, but does have organizational and cultural challenges, according to Andrew Hoffman, Holcim (US) professor of sustainable enterprise at the Ross School of Business and School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Mich.
In his conceptual note, "Note on Climate Change as an Organizational Challenge," published in 2019, Hoffman divides change management for sustainability into four main steps:
- Recognizing the need for change and figuring out what can be done to achieve it. For example, a business may conclude that it generates too many carbon emissions. It will then identify ways in which it may reduce them and evaluate the tools that will help it achieve this goal.
- Preparing the company for the coming change and addressing reticence to it. Hoffman noted that sometimes this happens through what he terms “a crisis or organizational jolt,” such as a national disaster.
- Acting on the plan for change. This is when leaders communicate to employees the vision for change and empower their people to take action. This step also involves working toward short-term wins and refining processes to make further improvements.
- Demonstrate to employees that they have contributed to driving change, and what that means for the company. This step is often accompanied by rewards like benefits, compensation or promotions.
"If you want to change people’s behavior, you’ve got to connect it to rewards," Hoffman said.
Help employees understand where sustainability fits into their role
For companies to succeed in driving sustainability, employees must understand how it applies to their specific jobs, according to Hoffman. For example, some sustainability best practices may be more relevant to the accounting department, where others are better suited for marketing.
Oftentimes, the best way to communicate where sustainability fits into different roles is showing where it fits in the context of business concerns like capital, consumer demand, and operational efficiency, he said.
"I’ve talked to people in business who say, 'We don’t talk about climate change at all, we talk about energy efficiency because that’s where we can address this issue,'" Hoffman said.
Employees won’t pay attention to sustainability if it isn’t linked to the strategic core of the business, he said. For a household products manufacturer, it may make sense to connect it with consumer demand. For a big box retailer, attaching it to operations and supply chains may be the best approach.
Recruit sustainability-minded talent
Getting the right people on board is a critical part of driving sustainability change management. Hoffman urges companies to consider the following when evaluating job candidates:
- Do they understand what sustainability is?
- Do they believe that climate change is real?
- Do they think that business is responsible for driving sustainability?
- Do they see the business opportunity in it?
Based on the answers to these questions, Hoffman said that it then becomes easier to place people on a spectrum:
- Those who are all-in.
- Those who don’t get it.
- Those who resist it.
- Those in the undecided middle.
"You can’t weed out the undecided middle, but you can weed out those that are going to resist and don’t get it," Hoffman said.
Build a sustainability-minded army
In many organizations, the sustainability "department" is a one-person show, according to Yeager. It’s often treated as add-on or lumped in with another function like branding, communications and public affairs. Under this model, the rest of the company tends to view the person who heads up sustainability as a thorn in its side.
"That lack of internal capacity is a real challenge in driving change," Yeager said.
At her previous position as director of the Sustainability Project Management Office at The Coca-Cola Co. in North America, headquartered in Atlanta, Ga., Yeager sought to build an "army" of employees who would promote sustainability throughout the organization. Teaching people about the issues — many of whom wanted to be more sustainable but didn’t know how — helps true change to take hold.
"We did a lot of work [to] build the army [and] tell them: this is how you make a sustainable choice in your business," Yeager said. "[Then we] let them drive it so that we weren’t the thorns in their side all the time."
Challenges in driving sustainability change management
In his conceptual note, Hoffman lists several reasons those driving change management for sustainability meet resistance. These include:
- An unwillingness to break with comfortable, familiar routines.
- Breakdowns in communications.
- Too much focus on short-term costs over long-term goals.
- Threats to the existing power structure. For example, the impending change may place more relevance on one department while stripping another of its utility.
"People don’t like change," Hoffman said.
While sustainability change management may be easier when times are rough, “when things are good, it makes it really hard,” he said.
Compensation structures can also be problematic for sustainability leaders tasked with driving change. Yeager points out that many chief financial officers (CFOs) receive bonuses based on their results related to revenue and profit. If they view sustainability as a cost source, it will be difficult to implement new practices.
This is why Yeager encourages sustainability professionals to speak in terms of business growth, opportunity and value.
"If you work for a for-profit company, you’ve got to show them the pathway to business value," she said.
Track employees’ understanding of and alignment with change
It's important to monitor how well people understand the change that’s being initiated and how aligned they are to it, according to Amanda Mackenzie, vice president of organizational effectiveness at WSP, a professional services firm based in Montreal, Que.
When people are particularly resistant to change — those Mackenzie categorizes as "immovables" — she cautions against wasting too much time on trying to convert them. Instead, organizations should focus on helping more willing team members adopt the change.
"[The immovables] may opt out, or ultimately the organization may opt out of them," Mackenzie said. "But you’ve got to be smart in terms of where you invest your time."
Carolyn Heinze is a Paris-based freelance writer. She covers several technology and business areas, including HR software and sustainability.
