Leveraging employee activism as a Chief Sustainability Officer

Employee activism can either cause reputational harm or bolster sustainability efforts: to achieve the latter, Chief Sustainability Officers should foster an open dialogue and ensure employee voices are heard and empowered.

When Amazon shared progress on its sustainability strategy in July, claiming to have achieved its 100% renewable energy goal seven years ahead of schedule, it didn’t take long for critics to point out the flaws in its methodology – with the most harmful comments coming from inside the company.

A group of employee activists called Amazon Employees for Climate Justice released its own report on the exact same day, alleging that “Amazon is using creative accounting and an overreliance on low quality renewable energy credits (RECs)” to meet its renewable power goals. 

“When we look at the locations in the US where Amazon actually operates its data centres, we estimate that Amazon only gets 22% renewable energy from the local utilities in those regions. And it is investing in data centre expansion in locations heavily dependent on oil, gas, and coal — like Northern Virginia and Saudi Arabia. How can Amazon claim that its operations are powered by 90% renewable energy when the renewable energy projects it is responsible for… don’t actually power its operations?” the organisation asked.

This type of accusation coming from people with insider knowledge of the company’s processes, operations and impacts can cause great reputational harm – not least because employees have a lot to lose by denouncing their companies’ malpractices. 

As an example, two of the founders of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice were fired in 2020 for “repeatedly violating internal policies”. It’s clear that employees’ words bear more weight than that of consumers or NGOs.

What (not) to do when activist employees speak out

According to Matthew Cook, Co-Founder at corporate culture consultancy theSHIFT, firing employees that speak out may be the last thing a company wants to do. 

“How did it get to this stage? What trust has been broken, such that there are these types of groups, and why haven't we involved and engaged along the way and built that trust so it isn't an ‘us versus us versus them’ type mentality,” he asks.

“If it has got to that stage, you fundamentally need to rebuild trust with your employees, and you can do that in a number of ways, but the first and foremost is to be credible. Then there's also a personal level of trust that they need to rebuild: there's no easy fix,” he adds. 

Rebuilding trust would start by engaging with the groups that are holding the company accountable, Cook explains – but ideally that engagement should start long before employees feel the need to denounce greenwashing.

Always overcommunicate

“It's very easy for companies to promote what they're doing and make it sound good, and if you're an employee, it’s easy to also see, well, that's not what my experience is like. So there's a definite need for much greater onus from CSOs and from the organisation, especially if they're communicating externally, to first have understood, what have they communicated internally and what's that journey been like?” Cook tells CSO Futures, adding that external communication should be the final step after much internal engagement and communication.

Prior to any public announcement, workers should be informed about the actions that have been taken to meet targets: what processes and systems are changing to achieve these new commitments? “It's all just words, unless people can see that there are structural changes happening to make that happen,” Cook adds.

Then, Chief Sustainability Officers should work with Chief People Officers to involve and engage people in the initiative, either through employee resource groups, all hands meetings or other mechanisms that allow interested people to support the initiative across its lifetime – so that by the time it is communicated externally, they have seen the evidence of it in action, and have had a chance to raise issues internally. 

“Our advice is: always overcommunicate. We always fall into the trap of thinking, Well, we said this six months ago, so they'll remember it, and it's over. When you think you're tired of saying something is when people are starting to remember and register it,” he recommends.

Employee activism: ‘A voice for change’

Speaking at a recent sustainability conference, Veronique Toully, Global Head of Sustainability at pharmaceutical company UCB, also noted that employee activists can be a powerful force for positive change – as long as leaders learn how to allow their voices to be heard.

“Most organisations are not super comfortable with it, because it's actually seen as disruption. You have a plan, you have a strategy – why on earth are people coming and asking you to do more? It's still controversial,” she said.

On stage, she gave a few examples of how UCB started leveraging and promoting employee activism for good, including thanking employees that pushed for climate change to be included in the business agenda in 2010 and empowering Hispanic employees to develop target communication campaigns taking into account cultural differences.

More recently, the company set up a global webinar for all employees on activism, led by Tessa Wernink, Co-Founder of sustainable phone company Fairphone and founder of workplace activism platform The Undercover Activist.

Toully warned that promoting employee activism is “not always about doing exactly what the people want to do”, but simply opening the dialogue and being aware of internal expectations can bring tremendous value.

“We have in our organisation a fantastic force, which are those people who want us to go above and beyond what we are doing. And it's all about culture and [fostering the] leadership qualities of the people in the company. It's about being aware that you could have blind spots, and really going outside and being open to other perspectives. It's about listening to employee activists, but also entering in a constructive dialogue and really considering them as creative allies, rather than disruptors,” she advised.