How Can Businesses Combat Climate Quitting?

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Climate quitting is the phenomenon whereby people who don’t want to work for climate change contributors quit to work for another business that more closely matches their values. More broadly, younger Millennials and Gen Z workers make active choices to work for businesses that reflect their values. Including their values with regard with to climate change and sustainability. This has led many to ask: how can businesses combat climate quitting and retain talented employees?

Climate quitting is therefore an employee-driven issue. And the issue is fueled largely by younger workers, the ones most valuable to most businesses.

Step 1 is to Empower Your Employees

The key to combatting climate quitting is therefore to allow and encourage employees to do the things they want to do to combat climate change.

Start by letting people make suggestions as to what they want your business to do to combat climate change – and then implement them.

Let them form employee resource groups if they choose. Give them PTO to volunteer for climate-related causes. Gather their sustainability suggestions. Offer incentives to employees for proposing ways to make your business less vulnerable to climate change. You can even consider creating a role to address your business’s initiatives to deal with climate change. Offer learning opportunities related to climate change. For example, invite speakers who can provide expert leadership on dealing with climate change to talk at company events.

The more involved your employees are, the less likely your business is going to need to worry about how to combat climate quitting.

Remember to emphasize the positive things you and your employees are doing

Don’t focus solely on encouraging/asking workers to ‘reduce’ this or that, for example. That’s not as motivating as rewarding participation and emphasizing benefits that are being achieved.

Additionally, letting your people know how many are getting involved is reinforcing as well. For example, say things like 63% of employees are reducing paper use and have saved xxxx number of trees. That’s better than simply reminding people to ‘think before they print’. Pointing out that more than half of workers are contributing to saving xxx amount of water or have contributed to planting xxx amount of trees makes other people want to get involved, too.

Even small things like showing employees statistics on things like the effect of reducing unnecessary paper use, can show employees how much of a difference their actions and your actions can have. Employees need to know about the successes of any sustainability initiatives you have implemented.

Step 2 is To Get Real About Remote and Hybrid Work

Walk the walk with your employees. Let people work remotely or offer hybrid work options. Given that so many businesses have doubled down on in-person work for dubious reasons, offering remote and hybrid work will give you an immediate advantage with many younger and mid-career workers.

Remote work significantly reduces commuting and transportation-related emissions and, if properly communicated, goes a long way toward showing a real willingness to adopt business practices that show commitment to the climate.

Furthermore, for those who do come on-site to work, offer real incentives for commuting options that are less emissions-intensive. For example, subsidize public transportation fees, and offer carpooling and rideshare options. Offer free EV charging and facilities for bike riders (including on-site showers where possible).

All of these efforts become ever more crucial in an era when gasoline and diesel prices have risen dramatically within the space of a year. Commuting is a real cost for many employees and maintaining one in the face of rising prices amounts to a pay cut for many. Provide real financial assistance by reducing commuting burdens. That’s a solid and practical way of having your business combat climate quitting.

Step 3: Know Your Business’s Carbon Footprint – and Reduce It!

Your employees also need to know the big picture. You should be measuring your carbon footprint on a regular basis and doing things to reduce it. Show your employees what you have done to reduce your carbon footprint and how successful those efforts have been. Use statistics (not misleadingly, by the way).

Step 4: focus Your Efforts to Combat Climate Change

Pick a lane. Pick a particular area of climate change to focus on and devote significant resources to that area. Let’s say you decide to make public health your focus and you center your efforts on reducing the air pollution that contributes both to climate change and poor health outcomes for residents of polluted areas.

Having a focus makes it easier to show your employees what you are doing to deal with climate change. You are more likely to be able to show measurable results in a single area than with a vague statement like ‘going green.’ Picking a lane shows a commitment to actually doing something as opposed to just ‘saying’ something (i.e., greenwashing). When your workers can see real results, your business will have gone a long way toward being able to combat climate quitting.

Step 5 Is to Remember that Climate Adaptation Efforts Are Important Too

Remember that dealing with climate change is not just about mitigation, it’s also about adaptation. Highlighting what your business does to contribute to community adaptation is another way to show your employees that you are taking climate change issues seriously. Vague goals for ‘reducing emissions’ or ‘promoting sustainability’ by touting things you would already do are not as convincing as real efforts to help the community (or communities) where your business is located.

For example, have an annual (or better yet, monthly) day of climate-related volunteering. Employees can help restore natural environments in your area. Or you could hold a trash clean-up day. Or the day could include things like planting trees, developing community gardens, monitoring local wetlands, etc.

step 6: Deal With AI Before Your Employees Start Quitting

That said, the raw reality is that greenhouse gas emissions are at an all-time high and the big mad push for artificial intelligence (AI) is making things worse. You need to forthrightly address with your employees what stance your business is taking toward AI and its effects on the climate.

For example, your business can buy carbon offsets. If you do buy carbon offsets, make sure to let your employees know to what extent those offsets actually reduce emissions and how those offsets are certified. If you can get carbon-neutral certified (by a reputable certifier), you will almost certainly not have to worry about being able to combat climate quitting.

You can also use a tool like the En-ROADS simulator to help understand what the effects of various company policies are on both the climate and the business itself. Getting employees involved in using the simulator (or other tools) and sharing the results can help your employees understand the trade-offs involved in dealing with climate change. Understanding makes people more likely to support realistic and repeatable company policies that your business can actually use. This is an overlooked but valuable way your business can combat climate quitting.

Step 7: Businesses Can Combat Climate Quitting with Retrofitting and Energy Saving Initiatives

Remember that saving energy is beneficial for both your business and the climate. Retrofitting company facilities and owned buildings for maximum energy efficiency is a double win and shows your commitment to the climate in a way that is unavoidably visible to your employees. New buildings should be designed and outfitted for maximum sustainability, a move that not only helps combat climate quitting but also tends to increase employee comfort and engagement in company workspaces. Employee comfort and engagement in turn tend to increase job satisfaction and employee loyalty toward their employer.

Step 8: Look for renewable energy sources to power your business

Rooftop solar can be part of an energy retrofit that makes you less dependent on both fossil fuels and the public electricity grid. As data centers are projected to chew through electricity at a mind-boggling rate, reducing your dependence on existing public grids may end up being a matter of life or death for your business. Consumers may struggle to pay increased rates in places affected by data centers but so will businesses. Especially small businesses.

You may or may not be able to buy wind or geothermal or other forms of renewable energy, but it is worth looking into any and all forms of renewables available to you. Put bluntly, being proactive in reducing emissions via smart energy usage is not just something you should be doing to entice your employees to stay. It’s something you should be doing to ensure your own survival in a rapidly changing energy landscape.

Step 9: Supply Chain Management

Supply chain management is the next step. A documented sustainable supply chain goes beyond the surface of trying to position your business as climate-responsible. Supply chain management affects your business’s carbon footprint on a deeper level and ultimately makes a real impact. How so? Working with suppliers with climate-friendly policies helps those businesses survive and thrive and encourages other businesses to adopt similar practices. Be an advocate for climate awareness throughout the supply chain, not just for your business but for your industry.

You should also have your purchasing and sourcing departments constantly scouting for products and practices that are environmentally friendly and to the extent possible, you should allow those producers and suppliers who meet environmental standards to use your name and recommendations to promote their businesses.

There are risks to promoting yourself as a climate-friendly business, especially if you fail to live up to your own hype. But – if you do live up to your promises, marketing your efforts as part of your brand strategy can turn your policies into a recruiting tool.

The key is to involve your employees in both your climate-friendly policies and in how they are communicated to the wider world. Involving employees does not mean just turning things over to an internal marketing team. It means finding out from your employees who care about climate change exactly what resonates with workers like them and how you can let your stakeholders know where you stand. Your stakeholders want to know what your business is doing on this subject.

How Can Businesses Combat Climate Quitting Recap

Empowering employees, supporting hybrid and remote work, measuring and reducing your carbon footprint, and focusing your climate change efforts on a promising area are not that difficult to do and indeed can put you in the vanguard of attracting motivated and engaged younger workers.

Supporting your local community in adaptation efforts, getting real about AI, going for renewables, and managing your supply chain are not necessarily as easy, but they can provide real payoffs for your business over the long run.

The bottom line is that you won’t just retain your employees and combat climate quitting, you’ll actually make a difference in combatting climate change itself.

Tags: AI, air pollution, society, Work