Employees are the new customers

Sustainability isn’t going anywhere. If you are looking to position yourself as a leader, you need to be taking bold leaps to set yourself apart from the mainstream who can talk a good game.

It’s time to cut the c*rbon, just going for neutral is no longer enough when there’s nature to consider, materials in the mix, plus, unfortunately, a whole lot more. With so many challenges to contend with, it’s clear you can’t do this alone. 

This is where your employees come in. But do you know what they are motivated by?

In today's corporate landscape, employees aren't just seeking a job—they're seeking purpose. And for the new generation of talent, that purpose extends beyond profit margins to environmental sustainability. Research shows that 91% of new graduates actively apply for roles that help them make a difference in people’s lives.

And it's not just about recruitment; it's about retention. Did you know that 40% of employees contemplate changing roles if sustainability isn't embedded in the company culture? (Edelman Intelligence, 2019)

Like customers, today’s workforce has increasing awareness and access to additional opportunities, meaning that leaders need to proactively develop a sustainable culture in order to maintain a competitive advantage in today’s talent market.

So how do you tackle this?

Treat them as you would your customers, in the knowledge that those who understand their customers come out on top. Work collaboratively towards getting clarity on the biggest challenge prohibiting your transition to sustainable leadership.

This is a huge opportunity to reimagine the employee experience and co-create an environment that facilitates proactivity and productivity in addition to pro-nature behaviour. If you can create a culture of innovation, you’ll be laying strong foundations for the future of work.

Yet too many smart leaders waste time and money on initiatives that don’t work. Most organisations have established a successful way of identifying the strategies needed to succeed as a business-but rarely provide the same level of resource or precision to harnessing the team required to activate these strategies. Fundamentally, if you don’t understand exactly what the barriers are to action, your ability to generate great ideas and translate them into sustainable action will always feel painfully slow and potentially ineffective. 

Organisations need employees who care deeply about the purpose of the company and are committed to contributing to its growth and improvement. If employees neither feel empowered by the goal nor supported by the organisation and its leadership, motivation and engagement can and will deteriorate.

This is where we come in. At Nula, we help future-focused leaders create sustainable cultures of change by focusing on an area that is often overlooked in the sustainability space: deeply understanding your people by designing with them

We kickstart the innovation process, helping you to discover and define the problem through our diagnostic survey and stakeholder workshop, before working with our partners to activate the solution.

If you would like to find out more about how we can help you, please book in for a 15 minute discovery call with our founder.