Sustainability in business has grown exponentially over the last decade and has been primarily driven by both consumer and investor demand. In fact, the value of the sustainability market is projected to grow from $17 billion in 2023 to more than $105 billion by 2032. For several years, sustainability has been fundamental to companies’ overall environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy.
What we are now seeing blossom in the world of workplace sustainability is its impact on potential employees’ decisions to start and stay in a company. Job seekers are placing as much value on sustainable practices as consumers and investors, and it is becoming increasingly important for companies to position sustainability as part of a modern employer value proposition (EVP).
Growing Demand from Gen Z and Millennials for Value-led Employers
Your EVP is all about the benefits, values, and rewards you offer to your employees in exchange for their hard work, skill set, and commitment. An impactful EVP is what draws employees to your company and keeps them around. It demonstrates how much you value things like company culture, compensation, work-life balance, and now, sustainability – especially when it comes to Gen Z and Millennials.
These age groups are substantially concerned about the impact of climate change, and it is beginning to affect their career decisions. In fact, 46% of Millennials and 50% of Gen Z are pushing their employers to drive change on environmental issues. On the flip side, only 15-16% feel that they can influence their organization’s sustainability efforts. That’s a pretty big gap in demand versus action.
Now is the time for employers to act on these discrepancies. Gen Z and Millennials are facing a lot of unique challenges as they plan their lives and careers, and demonstrating that your EVP includes the things they value, like sustainable workplace culture, will be essential for attracting and retaining skilled employees.
How Localization Teams Can Support Sustainability Goals
Localization teams can play a huge part in making sustainability more effective, accessible, and relevant. Because localization is all about adjusting digital content, products, and services to meet local needs cross-culturally, it can help ensure that specific environmental concerns are being addressed.
Linguistic, cultural, and environmental differences play a role in whether a solution works in a specific region, and environmental regulations vary widely across different countries. Localization allows you to adapt your technology to meet local market needs effectively and at scale.
Localization teams can also use digital content efficiently to create, manage, and deliver content using fewer resources and lower costs. Digital content efficiency means understanding what different audiences need (linguistically, products or technologies, local culture), localizing and optimizing your content to meet those needs, and always ensuring accuracy.
How Companies Can Communicate Sustainability in Hiring Materials
Sustainability in hiring materials, also commonly known as “green hiring”, is a way for companies to be more environmentally friendly during the hiring process. One of the primary ways to implement green hiring strategies is to focus on digitization. This includes things such as paperless systems for application submissions, onboarding and training materials, conducting online interviews, and using digital platforms for job postings or virtual job fairs.
It’s also crucial to present your company as one that prioritizes sustainability by showcasing your current efforts or your future goals in a sustainable workplace culture. This could be on your website, within your job descriptions, and even in your onboarding and training materials. This demonstrates your commitment to sustainable practices and will attract environmentally conscious candidates. Plus, those eco-friendly job seekers will help you work toward your sustainability goals even further.
How to Achieve Internal Alignment Without “Greenwashing”
As important as it is to present your company as sustainable to prospective employees, it’s also critical to be aware of greenwashing. There is a marked difference between HR, marketing, and all internal teams being aligned and putting forth the same “green story” compared to greenwashing.
Internal alignment is about truly implementing sustainable practices from top to bottom and getting buy-in from all stakeholders. Greenwashing happens when an organization focuses more on advertising that they are green rather than implementing environmentally friendly efforts. It’s often misleading or false.
You can help your team achieve internal alignment by creating a sustainability plan that is workable and achievable by all team members. This goes hand in hand with encouraging employee input, establishing compliance metrics, and establishing implementation deadlines.
At Vistatec, sustainability is a company-wide priority. Our dedicated Sustainability Teams channel and charitable initiatives like our donation to Cool Earth during the 12 Days of Christmas are just some of the ways we are committed to raising awareness and driving impact.
Sustainability as a Trust and Loyalty Factor
At the end of the day, putting sustainability on the priority list for your EVP isn’t just about attracting new employees. It’s also about retaining your current ones. Losing a good employee because your values don’t align with theirs is detrimental to your company culture, morale, productivity, and revenue. It can also be much more difficult and costly to hire a new employee than it is to retain an existing one.
Employees want to work with a company they trust and believe in. They don’t want you to simply talk the talk when it comes to sustainability – they want you to walk the walk. Put your goals into action and show meaningful results. Explore new avenues of sustainability as you grow. Take feedback from employees and turn it into a plan. The more your employees feel like they can trust you and your sustainability efforts, the more loyal they will be to your company and the team.
Aligning with Global Values
Sustainability is essential to employees worldwide, so it’s important to be able to adapt your content, learning materials, products, and services to meet global sustainability needs and values.
At Vistatec, we help organizations spread their sustainability initiatives to every audience. Ready to learn more? Explore how Vistatec helps organizations align with global values and take your efforts to the next level.