Sustainability in the workplace shouldn’t just be about recycling – it’s about people as well

Companies can effectively measure their carbon footprint, but not their people – we need demonstrable metrics to create a culture of workforce sustainability

Mention the word ‘sustainability’ in connection with the workplace, and most companies will point to initiatives such as waste recycling, carpooling and smart lighting, small but important gestures towards working in a more environmentally-friendly way. And for larger companies, sustainability is also bound up with corporate social responsibility ie. getting an official audit of their carbon footprint and a green tick on their website.

Yet the concept of sustainability in the workplace stretches far beyond just the environmental agenda. Sustainability has come to mean going green – but that’s only half the story. At its heart, sustainability is about making the best of the resources we have. That means our people as much as our planet

As AI fundamentally shakes up the way that many companies operate and how people work for them, there’s a growing impetus to reclaim sustainability in a workforce context. Rather than just measuring our CO2 emissions, we need to start properly measuring our people if we’re to successfully navigate this next stage of business.

In simple terms, ‘workforce sustainability’ is about retaining, nurturing and redeploying people instead of constantly firing and hiring. It’s also about developing a workplace culture that runs on shared values and goals. But what it isn’t about is ping pong tables in the canteen or annual engagement surveys. Rather than just paying lip service to inclusivity or work/life balance, it’s about assembling a team whose skills, capabilities and aspirations are recognised and harnessed to their greatest potential. A team that feels seen and valued.

However, to achieve a strong level of workforce sustainability requires a lot more than just occasional line manager meetings and mission statement away days. In fact, companies need to take a leaf out of the green sustainability playbook and come up with accurate ways of measuring not only how employees are performing, but also understanding what their potential is – where they could go within the company in the future, and what needs to happen to get them there.

It’s an odd situation that, beyond pre-existing qualifications and corporate milestones, most companies tend to have a poor understanding of the people who work for them. And that means that when any disruption occurs within the standard business model – with the rapid adoption of AI being the obvious example – they don’t understand how their workforce might pivot and adapt to this new normal. All too often, and as we’ve seen many times recently, they panic and make rash, ill-informed decisions, making people redundant who they assume are now excess to requirements while frantically trying to recruit new talent to fill emerging roles.

Needless to say, this is the opposite of workforce sustainability, as well as being an expensive and inefficient way to run a business.