More and more companies are claiming to be sustainable. But customers and potential employees are increasingly well informed and very critical. They want to know who is just making the claim and who is really acting in a climate-friendly way. This is how you successfully communicate a genuine sustainability strategy to set yourself apart from companies that engage in greenwashing.
If you want to convince, you need a strategy with measurable goals. To achieve this, it is helpful to define the term precisely. Whereas sustainability used to mean using only as much raw material – originally wood – as will grow back, we now understand it to cover several dimensions: social, economic and ecological sustainability. The first step is to clarify which goals you want to achieve in which areas and what the milestones are. Without measurable goals and an overarching strategy, individual actions such as saving paper, avoiding waste, or reducing the number of meat dishes in the cafeteria quickly come across as proxy measures. An therefore there is a risk of being suspected of greenwashing.
Making sustainability tangible in the company
For environmental sustainability, an easily measurable variable is CO2 emissions, or the avoidance of this harmful climate gas. So why not simply communicate these successes and thus communicate one’s own sustainability? The answer is obvious: without an emotional connection, the message often goes unheard.
If you want to communicate sustainability in a sustainable way within your company, you have to make it emotionally tangible for your employees, and ideally in all three dimensions. So we took this principle to heart for the Changers Fit app: Instead of renunciation and prohibitions, it’s about fun and winning, the joy of exercise, and the good feeling of achieving something together and making the world a little better. The app intelligently combines climate protection, health promotion and social commitment. Large companies, including EY, ING and H&M, rely on the Changers Fit app, which has received awards as both a BGM and CSR platform.
How the Changers Fit app works
The basic idea behind the app is quite simple: if you leave your car behind and travel on foot, by bike or bus & train, you get credit coins in the app for the CO2 you save. The app also offers many health-promoting activities. Here, too, participation is rewarded with coins. Changers Fit can there digitize the entire workplace health promotion. Healthy eating, meditation, office gymnastics or safety training – integrate your own measures into the app and incentivize them with coins. Employees can exchange the collected coins for rewards on the marketplace.
The marketplace is open for individual extensions. It is therefore very easy to expand the existing offers individually. If you want to prominently communicate your own social donation projects as another dimension of sustainability, you can integrate them into the app. Employees can then convert their coins into donations for these projects. This not only increases the visibility of the social commitment, but also increases the employees’ identification with the company.
Communicating the sustainability strategy
The app has its own communication tools to help companies with sustainability communication. This increases the participation rate at Changers Fit. The tool “Colleagues Invite Colleagues” spreads the word about how easy it is to integrate health and sustainability into everyday life, and the community grows naturally. In this app-internal sustainability community, users can share successes and comment on posts. Another efficient communication tool are the push notifications, which bring news directly to the employees’ screen.
Every satisfied employee represents the company’s green strategy. In addition, communication tools such as iFrame banners, floor stickers and indoor posters are available. These media support participation motivation and at the same time communicate what an important role health and sustainability play in the corporate culture.
The most important tips for successful sustainability communication at a glance:
- Define sustainability goals in the social, ecological and economic areas and make them measurable.
- Develop strategy and set milestones
- Make sustainability strategy tangible for employees in everyday life
- Use a variety of channels, especially digital ones, to promote communication.
It always makes sense to support internal sustainability communication with intelligent digital tools. This way, your health and climate protection goals are intelligently linked, sustainability becomes tangible, and communication with employees* will be more efficient. Simply try out Changers Fit. You can test the app free of charge for 14 days HERE.
