Driving Sustainability Through People Analytics: Why HR Should Lead the Way

 
 

Sustainability is an increasingly important concept in today’s global economy, prompting businesses of all sizes to reduce their environmental footprint and impact. Whether through implementing green initiatives to reduce carbon emissions or through organisational change to promote more sustainable practices in daily operations, these actions can have a real and positive impact on our planet and our business.

Traditionally overseen by the operations department, HR has recently assumed a more prominent role in driving green initiatives and promoting environmental sustainability, and rightfully so. Employees play a critical role in driving sustainability initiatives, and HR is uniquely positioned to influence their behaviour.

Among the obvious benefits of improved brand reputationincreased employee engagement, and reduced costs, research suggests that employees prefer to work for sustainable companies.

And if you think about the whole employee lifecycle, it becomes clear that HR has the power to embed sustainability into the very fabric of an organisation.

Take recruitment, for example. HR can use assessments and talent analytics tools to measure a candidate’s commitment to sustainability objectives, ensuring they hire employees who not only have the right skills but also match their values. Similarly, during onboarding, HR leaders can ensure employees understand the company’s sustainability goals and demonstrate how their roles contribute to achieving those objectives.

These examples are just the tip of the iceberg. People analytics equips HR with a powerful tool to track and measure employee behaviours to inform sustainability initiatives. By pinpointing areas for improvement and ensuring goal attainment, companies can utilise people analytics to drive sustainable development practices effectively.

The Role Of People Analytics In Assessing and Reporting on Sustainability

Sustainability is a complex and multifaceted concept that encompasses many different areas, such as carbon emissions, energy usage, and waste reduction. To effectively reduce a company’s environmental impact, it is essential to have accurate data on these metrics.

With people analytics, HR can collect and analyse data on these topics to measure and report on the organisation’s sustainability performance. By tracking and analysing employee behaviours and sentiment towards green initiatives, companies can identify areas for improvement, develop targeted talent management and employee engagement programs, and assess the impact of sustainability initiatives over time.

In addition to measuring traditional sustainability metrics such as energy usage and waste reduction, people analytics can also be used to measure more niche topics, such as:

Social Network Analysis

HR can evaluate the influence of employee networks and identify key influencers in sustainability initiatives. By understanding how, when, and with whom employees engage regarding sustainability goals, HR leaders can identify areas of engagement or disengagement. 

Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis, an application of natural language processing (NLP), can help HR gauge employees’ emotional responses to green initiatives. By analysing data from employee surveys, social media platforms, and focus groups, organisations can understand employee sentiment on environmental impact topics.

By leveraging these data-driven insights and benchmarking them against industry standards, people analytics empowers organisations to create a roadmap for sustainable success.

Ensuring Ethical People Analytics

Despite the benefits of people analytics, it is important to remember that data-driven decisions must always be made ethically. Companies need to be mindful that collecting and using employee data can have a potential impact on their well-being, privacy, and safety. Therefore, HR leaders must take appropriate measures to ensure ethical personal data collection, safeguard employee data and maintain its security at all times.

 
 

Referring to Insight222’s Data Ethic Charter, there are six steps to ethically sound people analytics:

  1. Define what’s important: Clearly define your approach to collecting, analysing, and sharing people data.

  2. Align key stakeholders: Identify and engage with key stakeholders to ensure that your principles address their key concerns.

  3. Communicate individual benefits: Communicate the specific individual benefits of your analytics project to each stakeholder.

  4. Establish a process: Develop a change management process for charter creation that incorporates credible insights and best practices.

  5. Create an implementation plan: Formulate an implementation plan with clear action steps and decision gates to ensure that your project stays within ethical boundaries.

  6. Translate the charter into action questions: Create specific questions for each stage of the analytics project to assess compliance with agreed-upon ethical norms

Best Practices For Developing A Sustainability Strategy

Once you have your data-driven insights and ensured ethical compliance, you can start to plan and implement a sustainability strategy. Here are some best practices for developing a successful sustainability strategy:

  • Engage stakeholders: Engaging stakeholders from all departments of the organisation is essential for creating an effective sustainability strategy. This includes IT, operations, marketing, and HR.

  • Set goals and objectives: Set specific goals that are achievable and can be measured over time. This will help you track your progress, identify successes, and push for further advancements.

  • Measure results: Continuously measure the results of sustainability initiatives to ensure that they’re having a positive impact on both environmental and economic performance.

To further encourage employee engagement in sustainability initiatives, talent management strategies such as performance reviews and promotions can be leveraged. Additionally, promoting a working environment that embraces organisational changes that foster sustainability can cultivate a culture of continuous improvement.

As highlighted by Isabelle Chappuis, in a conversation with co-author Gabriele Rizzo and David Green on the Digital HR Leaders podcast, HR must:

“First walk the sustainable talk and support and guide their employees to design their own activities at work, or outside of work, so that they can as individuals, have a stronger sustainable impact...

The second would be, design carbon footprint models for employees so you can propose applicable or actionable solutions to help them minimise their impact. How do they come to work? Is it by car, by bus? When do they turn off the computers? And so on. So easy, low hanging, low cost, high impact actions.

The last, which is again, one of those very quickly implementable actions and one that a lot of companies here in Switzerland are starting to do, is to give your employees the opportunity to offer their time, be it one day or two days a year, to a noble environmental or societal cause, during their work hours. This is good for them, this is good for the world, and it is good for the company’s brand.”

People Analytics Paving The Way To Sustainability

Human Resources plays a crucial role in the sustainability movement. With people analytics, HR professionals can ensure that their data-driven insights lead to tangible outcomes.

Driving sustainability through people analytics is about doing right by people and the planet:

  • Understanding what’s important to them.

  • Respecting team and employee values.

  • Ensuring that organisations contribute to a better future. 

While the ethical implications of people analytics should not be overlooked, HR can lead the organisation towards a more sustainable future by adopting a responsible, data-driven approach and implementing thoughtful strategies.

However, all these insights are void if not backed by action. To drive sustainability through analytics, HR must take the lead, take ownership of the data presented to them, and develop ethical strategies that align with their organisational objectives.

To achieve this, HR professionals need to have a comprehensive understanding of data-driven techniques and processes. That’s why myHRfuture has designed a range of people analytics courses specifically tailored to the HR professional to help them develop the skills they need to make a real difference in the sustainability movement.

To learn more about how you can become more data-driven, business-focused, and experience led, browse our myHRfututre Academy courses today!


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jasdeep Kareer

Jasdeep joined Insight222 in 2023 as a member of the products and services team. She brings a wealth of experience in data science, analytics, and client delivery having worked across a wide variety of industry sectors. After working for three years in Dubai, Jasdeep returned to the UK in 2019 where she established and led the People Science team at GE. She went on to develop an analytics client facing function within the analytics business at Workday. Jasdeep holds a Ph.D. in Applied Statistics from the University of Cambridge, and a Master’s in Mathematics & Statistics from The University of Sheffield. In her free time, Jasdeep enjoys travelling, dancing, trying different cuisines from around the world and following Formula 1.

If you’d like to connect with Jasdeep, please visit her LinkedIn here.


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