How to Engage Employees in Your Organisation's Net Zero Journey

Getting employees engaged in sustainability is one of the biggest levers an organisation has for reducing its carbon footprint. But how do you move beyond posters in the break room and actually embed climate action into your workplace culture? At our panel event 'Your Net Zero Journey and The Team You Need', sustainability leaders shared hard-won lessons on what actually works.

Start With a Clear Strategy

Fran, founder of sustainability consultancy One Stone, was emphatic: engagement starts with clarity. People inside the company need to know where the organisation is now, where it wants to get to, and how long it plans to take. They want to hear stories around it and they want their own interests taken on board.

Once you have designed your strategy, you need reasons for why it is good for business, good for employees, and good for the environment. Then you can start creating circles for employees to share ideas about how they want to contribute. The key is to really listen to people and pick up their ideas.

The Power of Employee Voice

A striking example came from Lockton, a large insurance company that recently refused to insure an Adani coal mine in Australia. They pulled out of a halfway-done agreement because their employees told them: we do not want you to do this. The power of employees in driving sustainability decisions is often underestimated, but it can be transformative.

Make It Part of the Job, Not an Add-On

If you are going to have environmental champions in your company, make sure it is written into their job description. Make sure they are reviewed on it every year and that they get paid for the work they do. Do not make it something additional to what they are already doing, relying on their passion alone. That is not sustainable -- in any sense of the word.

Board Education Is Critical

Research from Stern School of Business reviewed 1,118 directors of the Fortune 100 and found that only five had any climate knowledge at all. Yet in the same period, corporate climate pledges had tripled. Who is going to hold those companies to account? How will the board possibly know whether what the company is doing is right or not? Boards in particular need significant education on climate.

Carbon Literacy Training: Building a Core Competence

Phil Korbel from the Carbon Literacy Project shared how structured training can transform workplace culture. Carbon Literacy provides an adaptable framework for climate action training that first establishes the 'why' -- why is this relevant to my values and to our organisation's priorities -- and then moves to agency and action.

Crucially, it stops climate action being a compliance exercise or a message from head office. Instead, it motivates and empowers staff and brings the conversation to where people already are, asking: what is the best thing you can do? It has to work both top-down and bottom-up.

One early adopter, BBC Children's department, found that once senior leadership went through the training and gave permission, the enthusiasts on the ground ran with it. Another organisation, a major civil engineering company, brought forward their Net Zero date by years after their CEO completed the training.

Sector-Wide Collaboration

Carbon Literacy has expanded into shareable, pre-accredited training kits for entire sectors -- construction, legal, chemicals, healthcare, local government, and higher education. Over 12 government departments, 50+ councils, and major construction firms like Morgan Sindall and Balfour Beatty are already collaborating on shared resources. This sector-wide approach builds critical mass and peer pressure, transforming climate knowledge from a niche concern into a mainstream professional competence.

Practical Steps to Get Started

The advice from the panel was simple: just start. Climate culture within an organisation becomes infectious in a really good way. It is enabling for your people and enhances business performance. Start small, give your people permission, and you will find it takes hold.

Tools like Do Nation, Pawprint, and Geeky Zero can help make engagement fun, but remember: do not rely on your employees to get you to net zero. Employee engagement should complement, not replace, top-down strategic action on emissions reduction.