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MEASURING SUSTAINABILITY PROGRESS

Your Workplace Sustainability Strategy, Action Plan or Emissions Reporting requires ongoing management. Here are some tips for measuring and reporting on sustainability progress:

  • Embed sustainability into staff induction: Include a section in your induction program that explains your business’s sustainability goals, practices, and how new staff can contribute. For example, provide guidelines on energy-saving behaviors (e.g., turning off lights, managing air conditioning) or waste reduction initiatives (e.g., recycling stations and using reusable containers).
  • Update relevant workplace manuals: Incorporate sustainability principles and processes into your operations manual. This could include:
    • Energy management practices
    • Waste reduction protocols
    • Supplier guidelines
  • Formalise sustainable procurement: Create a policy that guides the purchases of energy efficient equipment or sustainable delivery (there are some companies who offer 'carbon neutral' delivery)
  • Provide a sustainability update in staff meetings (quarterly or annual)
  • Establish clear metrics for evaluating progress and include these in performance reviews with your staff (this can be tied back to the Staff Induction program)
  • Develop a dedicated communication channel, such as a newsletter or intranet page, to share updates, successes and resources
  • Schedule quarterly or biannual reviews to assess the effectiveness of the sustainability action plan, discuss obstacles and celebrate achievement

  • Integrate sustainability projects into current workflows. You may have systems like Asana, Trello, Teams, Accelo. All actions relating to your Sustainability Action Plan can be incorporated into this. For example, add tasks like 'collecting monthly electricity invoice data' into your current tracking systems
  • Create shared responsibility: Assign specific sustainability-related tasks to team members, such as updating energy-saving reminders or updating the annual Emissions Profile Report
  • Automate reminders and updates: Use task management systems to send automated reminders for recurring actions, such as collecting electricity invoice data
  • Projects can be scheduled in line with other project commitments (for example, IT upgrades, Fleet Upgrades, new staff recruitment drives)
  • Ensures sustainability actions can be in line with the workplace calendar (for instance, financial year or calendar year)

  • Dedicate time for sustainability reviews: Schedule regular sustainability reviews, such as a quarterly progress check or a monthly meeting to assess the impact of the sustainability actions. 
  • Organize sustainability-focused events: Hold themed days for activities like planting trees, office clean ups or staff training workshops on energy and waste reduction.
  • Allocate certain hours for people or block out time for sustainability efforts each month. For example, staff can stop their regular work to work on sustainability actions in given hours or days. You could have a pool of hours dedicated to sustainability efforts, and time tracked against this. You can use this as a metric for tracking your overall efforts towards sustainability over time. 
  • Ensure your team can have flexible scheduling for sustainability projects
  • For big projects like retrofits, have plenty of planning sessions

  • Get regular feedback from staff. Consider how much burden 'sustainability tasks' are placing on staff and use this to improve the process. You can use this information to address any resistance there is in the team towards sustainability action. 
  • Find ways to improve accountability and recognition for sustainability efforts
  • Formalise sustainability action into recruitment processes and job descriptions

  • Which actions were done
  • What worked, what didn’t
  • Did you go over/under budget
  • Were there supplier issues
  • What were your savings