Employee Engagement with Sustainable Business

How to Change the World Whilst Keeping Your Day Job

Nadine Exter

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136272271
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Sustainability is, and continues to grow as, a key issue for organizations: in the board room; with investors, customers and regulators; and from employees whose demands on organizations include improving their social and environmental performance in return for loyalty and commitment. However, as well as employees being a driver for organizations to embrace corporate sustainability, employees are also one of the most critical assets in enabling an organisation to understand and be able to deliver to its economic, social and environmental responsibilities.

Research shows that employees of all types are vital in the pursuit of sustainability, however, to date there is no one source that shows all of these identified types of employees and how they are involved in the sustainability process. This book fills that gap with interviews and case studies for each type of employee, as well as up-to-date research and analysis of the critical role of 'social intrapreneurs' and leaders within organisations. The book uses real life examples along with the latest research in an informative and accessible style. Management theory is used throughout – such as motivation, leadership skills and organisational behaviour – but this is discussed through examples, rather than in a theoretical manner.

This book will provide insight, examples and advice on the different types of employees who are, and can, contribute to a sustainable world via the organisation they work for: what they are doing from within the organization to contribute to societal, economic and environmental sustainability.

1 Unsung Heroes

Unsung Heroes: Individuals within an organisation quietly working to create a responsible and engaged organisational culture that enables sustainable business to flourish. They are called Unsung Heroes because the work they do is not always obvious – they create an engaged and responsible culture that becomes ‘the way things get done around here’, rather than a celebrated project or business win.

In 2007 leading UK retailer Marks & Spencer (M&S) set out a bold vision: to create an organisation that would be a leading example of a responsible and sustainable retailer – to be the greenest (now termed ‘sustainable’) retailer in the UK by 2012. It was bold because at the time they committed themselves to investing an estimated £40 million per annum for five years towards achieving this goal and were unsure if this investment would be repaid; because they committed themselves to doing this whilst competitively growing and succeeding economically. It was bold because at that time only a handful of for-profit businesses believed being sustainable also made good economic sense and had committed wholly to becoming a sustainable business; because at that time there was still not enough data to prove being sustainable was financially rewarding; and because few business models existed to help a business undertake this sort of change process.

Sir Stuart Rose, the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) at the time, gave his organisation five years to achieve a 100-point plan (80 more targets were added in 2010). Called Plan A – because there is no Plan B for the one planet we have – the plan included ambitious targets such as turning M&S carbonneutral by 2012 and impacting over three billion individual items that M&S purchases, manufactures and sells. Plan A involved changing how M&S operates in every way. But Sir Stuart Rose and his team had faith in M&S:

If an organisation with 70,000 people decides it wants to do something, I promise you, this is the organisation to do it.

(Sir Stuart Rose, 2007)

From 2007 to 2012 Plan A delivered a financial net benefit to M&S of £185 million (including £105 million in 2011–12 alone). In 2012 M&S became carbon-neutral, sent zero waste to landfill and reduced packaging use by 26%. Numerous awards and recognition have helped M&S as a brand and with gaining strong customer loyalty. Other organisations now look to M&S for advice on how they can undertake the sustainability journey. In 2010–11 the new CEO, Marc Bolland, continued the commitment of Plan A and announced the follow-up ambition of M&S: to be the world's leading sustainable major retailer by 2015.

The success of the past five years would not have been achievable if M&S as a whole had not supported and engaged with Plan A. A significant contribution to the company's success is because every employee was encouraged to get involved; Plan A became part of the language, goals and targets, and purpose of the business. In essence Plan A became a significant influence on the culture of the organisation and that organisational culture was strategically planned and managed, with specific experts working on the culture and engaging all employees so that Plan A could work. In turn, Plan A has become a key driver of employee engagement and recruitment and retention.

This chapter explores the strategic approach M&S took to engage employees in sustainability. It uncovers some critical Unsung Heroes working behind the scenes to create a culture of engagement that enabled success. The success of M&S is unique; but there are lessons to be learned that other organisations can utilise to help them on their own sustainability journey.

1.1 Case studies

Sarah Findlater, Head of Employee Engagement, M&S (UK and International)

We think M&S is special, because of our strong roots and heritage but also because we continue to evolve and innovate and so we are excited about and ambitious for our future. We are proud that we do business ethically and responsibly and we care about the world, our customers and colleagues and the communities we work amongst. As a result we inspire great trust and pride and passion and all those things are incredibly important to us.

The business is very invested in employees being engaged. But framing this mindset was not an overnight achievement. We have been running an engagement survey for five years and have worked hard to demonstrate the commercial value that highly engaged teams bring to the business in real terms. Nailing the evidence through robust data correlation has enabled our senior leadership teams to see the link between employee engagement scores and performance. Now the case is proven they are pushing for more information, and engagement is a much higher priority.

However, I would say it was probably in 2010 when we really got very strategic with how we create a culture of engagement and recognised the need for a more sophisticated approach. That is when the Centre of Expertise for Engagement was formed, a dedicated central team in Human Resources (HR) that focuses on creating an engaged culture and workforce and tasked with the development of the engagement strategy. As part of this, the engagement team took responsibility for the People part of Plan A commitments [previously responsibility of the Plan A team]; Plan A is really key in helping us to attract talent, engage employees, and helping us create pride and therefore it forms an important part of our employer brand. It gives us lots of engagement opportunities both in terms of increasing passion for the business but also in terms of enabling our people to play their part in Plan A. Engagement is now a business KPI [key performance indicator] for each manager – something the commercial teams asked for.

Of course, as with any organisation, we have ‘our way’ of doing things, our unique culture. We can be quite traditional in our processes and so change can sometimes be hard for people. We want our people to join in and contribute and so we work to provide opportunities for people to share their views. We invest a lot of time in explaining ‘the why’ to people; we want our colleagues to understand what we stand for, where we are going and how they fit into that.

As a big company there is also a risk of silos forming. This can be a positive thing because it helps to create close-knit teams and loyalty, but it can also get in the way when different parts of the business work together. We have recently launched an organising principle to galvanise the business to work really collaboratively for the benefit of the customer. It is called ‘In Touch’ and it is all about developing a mindset that encourages us to be more in touch with each other, with our customers and with the outside world. We launched about five initiatives to help get things going, such as sharing information on what different teams across the business are achieving, and encouraging colleagues to go out to stores and other departments for two to five days a year to really see what they are up to. The point is that they come back with a broader perspective and use their new insights to inform their decision making and business planning.

It is important to have a culture where every employee has a voice and an avenue to express that voice and can contribute to the business. We need actual mechanics to allow this. So we have a formal employee representative group, a Directors' breakfast once a month to gather feedback and views, we have a ‘Big’ idea scheme to encourage ideas to specific business challenges, and we educate our leaders on the importance of authentic listening. We have a dedicated section on the intranet with tools to help managers engage their team and create the conditions for a strong engagement culture, tips and advice across a range of subjects, we share success stories, and for those interested we give background information on specific aspects of engagement. This culture of engagement is a business priority for us.

Sarah joined M&S on the HR Graduate Scheme and has worked in various generalist and specialist HR roles throughout her 13 years there. Sarah was promoted to Head of Employee Engagement in 2011, where she has overall responsibility for Employer Brand and Employee Engagement Strategy, our People Plan A proposition, Employee Health and Wellbeing and the People Policy Specialist function. She is also a member of the M&S HR Leadership Team.

Sophie Brooks, Employee Engagement, M&S (UK)

I have the best job in the world! I sit between the Plan A team and the HR Engagement team and focus on the ‘People’ part of Plan A. I look at external people-focused drivers that can help create an engaged workforce and help us to be a responsible business delivering on our objectives and commitments. So I focus on five areas: employability, volunteering as an engagement tool, local fundraising to encourage community, diversity and wellbeing. As an umbrella to these areas I work on local community involvement.

My role was originally about charity partnerships, but Plan A is not about charity and it became clear that the role needed to be more strategic. The five areas were identified as existing but not strategic engagement tools, which they are, so they were pulled together in 2010 for one person to lead and my role moved to the Engagement team. All five areas are commitments we have made in Plan A, but more than that, they are also about creating an engaged culture and motivating the workforce. The two are integral.

‘Employability’ is a big area I work on. We get a huge return here on engagement levels because it provides motivation for how individual employees can contribute, provides a sense of community and corporate identity, and helps our employees really see the impact of their good actions – generating a pride to work for M&S. Essentially, ‘employability’ is about creating jobs and helping people overcome barriers to work. Marks & Start is our flagship employability programme which started back in 2004 when we asked our customers and employees who they wanted to see us support into work. The groups they chose were single parents, those with disabilities, young people and those at risk of homelessness. We work with four charity partners [Gingerbread, Remploy, the Prince's Trust and Business in The Community (BITC)] to deliver this programme, providing pre-employability training, a two-week placement in M&S and post-placement support. When the individual is on the placement in our stores or offices we assign a buddy to them and engage the immediate employee team to help. The ‘buddy’ is a role any employee can take on if they want to do a little bit more in their day job; it helps train our staff and show employees up close the impact of what we do. About 80% of those placed become accredited, which means if a job arises in M&S they don't have to go for interview, or even apply online, they can simply go straight into the role – that is the real beauty of the programme. Critically, 98% of those in the programme (those placed) say it is a positive experience and 40–50% who go through the M&S programme are employed after three months of their placement.

There are some areas that still need work however. We have historically had a leading diversity offer, but we know we need to move this on and be strategic about embedding the business case in order to continue to be an employer of choice for women, those from ethnic minorities and those of all ages.

For all our programmes there are soft and hard impacts, which is important to track and show how the programme is affecting engagement and therefore loyalty, performance and productivity. We are exploring an Employee Happiness Index and a Social Return on Investment indicator because we greatly invest in our programmes and so it is necessary to show the return. But if we had not taken that leap of faith in the beginning then we would not be where we are now. To prove these schemes are working – and that essentially my role is worth investing in – we monitor our engagement scores, which are good. We get a 90% response rate on the staff survey and from that about 75% score of employees feeling engaged [assessed via a series of specific engagement questions]. If something makes sense to us, we will experiment and try it a bit, see the ‘soft’ impacts. If we can prove the business case from that, then it expands. That is very much the way we do things here.

Sophie joined M&S in commercial management in a retail context, where she saw firsthand the b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• List of abbreviations
• You too can make a difference
• Introduction
• 1 Unsung Heroes
• 2 The corporate Sustainability Specialist
• 3 The Social Intrapreneur
• 4 The Sustainability Champion
• 5 The Sustainability Godparent
• Final thoughts
• Notes
• References
• Index