101 | Build Sustainable Corporate Cultures and Transform Your Workplace | James Hartley

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

Whether you're an organization of 2 people, 20, 200, or 20,000, everybody can make some small changes which will create that joint movement that will have a, a bigger long-term Impact.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Nice to have you back. Thanks for listening. Just one wee thing that I always forget to mention on the podcast. If you like this podcast and you keep coming back and you enjoy listening to us, and particularly if you're on Apple, I would really appreciate it if you could please just take time to give us a bit of a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts. It really, really helps to get the podcast out there. That would be fantastic. And I would really appreciate that 2 minutes of your time. Thank you. Thanks also to our sponsor Workvivo. As normal, our friend and sponsor, we're very grateful for the support that they give. And if you are looking at ways to try and engage your workforce around the world, particularly as we move more into hybrid working, then their employee engagement solution is well worth a look. You can find out more about them at workvivo.com, and you'll hear a little bit more about them later on. Now, today's interview. We are often, I think particularly in HR, we get saddled often with the big questions in organizations and we get saddled with the big themes and the big initiatives. And I'm thinking of things like diversity and inclusion. I'm thinking about engagement. I'm thinking about future of work and more recently sustainability and then ESG. And you know, those two, even though they're slightly different, I guess playing interchangeably in the world of HR. And in business. I think the biggest challenge that organizations often face is how do you connect your people to those things? How do you give them a role in helping you to be more diverse or more inclusive, more engaged? How do you get their feedback and input and ideas on how you create your future of work? And in today's conversation, much more about how do you involve them in your sustainability agenda? And that's what I'm talking to, to today's guest about. James Hartley is a global HR leader with Swiss Re. James, hello there.

Scott McInnes: Scott, very nice to be with you. Thanks for having me on the show.

You are very welcome. And listen, what I'm really excited about today, and one of the things I always say on the podcast, and I say to guests beforehand, is let's come up with something really practical, some advice and some thinking and some ideas that listeners can take away and literally apply next week, next month, next year, as, as they're listening to this podcast. And I know, having spoken to you before, James, that that's where we're going to get to today, hopefully. So I'm, I'm really excited about this conversation. Before we go there, let's go back to you. And let's maybe, maybe give me a quick 60-second pen picture of, of you, of, of where you've come from, of your role, maybe a little about Swiss Re if people don't know who you are.

Yeah, of course, happy to. So James Hartley, my personal purpose, Scott, is around enabling sustainable and positive change, and helping teams, individuals and organizations step out of their comfort zone with confidence in the digital age. I'm currently doing that at Swiss Re, which is a global insurance and reinsurance, 15,000 employees globally, and I'm looking after their digital and tech portfolio with a 20-plus-year career in HR change management and operation leadership. I'm also the global executive sponsor of our Net Zero U2 program, which is around engaging employees in that sustainability agenda that you talked about and have Happy to share some of the background to that in a moment.

Brilliant stuff. What a wonderful segue already. We're only 2 minutes in and you're segueing beautifully already. I guess my first question is, when you think about that program, we're going to talk about that maybe in a little bit more detail later on, but why did you believe it was so important to get employees at Swiss Re involved in the area of— I don't know whether you refer to it as ESG or sustainability or whether you differentiate the two. Maybe we can answer that too. Why did you feel it was so important to get them involved?

So I think there's a couple of things, Scott. So firstly, we're a real purpose-led organization. The purpose of Swiss Re is about making the world more resilient. And clearly that plays strongly into the sustainability agenda, the ESG agenda, and wanting to create that human connection with our employees with that larger sense of purpose. I think that's the first element. Second, we are champions of climate change and climate action. So we have very public commitments to net zero in our operations and net zero in our business. So it's part of the corporate DNA. But the particular trigger is realizing that the employee footprint or the employee carbon footprint is something like 6 to 8 times that of Swiss Re's operations and therefore let alone from the human and emotional engagement, actually practically, there's a huge impact that our employee base can have, far bigger than that of our own operations.

Hmm, okay, interesting. And I wonder, you know, there are bound to be cynics out there, because I think that programs like the one of yours that we're going to be talking about today is all about microchange. It's all about people feeling as though they're making a difference. And I wonder, do all those little microchanges really make a difference, or is this just about corporate internal PR?

I really think they do, and I think on two elements. One, from a cultural perspective, one of our aspirations is around creating joint movement. And I think we recognize that the more people who come together, the bigger the impact is going to be. But specifically on the sustainability side, it is absolutely that joint movement that makes a difference. I think we all get sometimes overwhelmed by just the sheer magnitude of climate change. You see deforestation, you see climate events, you see weather patterns, and the question is, how can I make a difference in that? And one of the key challenges is breaking that down. To do your best and then for us, remove the rest. So the more you can get people engaged, talking, making small changes, the bigger that collective impact is going to be and that sense of community and learning from each other. And those small actions, Scott, all do add up. So if you look in the 9 to 12 months since we've been running Net Zero U2, there's probably 130,000 microclimate actions that our colleagues have committed to. And the aggregate impact of that, in addition to the awareness, education, and engagement, really does make a difference the longer that rolls on.

And I guess the sheer volume, when you're talking about 130,000 actions, I think just the sheer volume of actions makes people go, hang on a minute, maybe there's something in this. Maybe I should be doing something as well if there's that many people doing that many things, which I guess acts as a catalyst, doesn't it?

Absolutely. And it can genuinely be small things. So whether it's having a vegan meal once a week, whether it's walking to work rather than taking the train on one day, whether it's buying one less piece of clothing or cycling up something. These aren't big life-changing decisions. We're not asking everybody to suddenly get rid of their car or put in new heating systems. Obviously those are great, they have an impact, but it's very much those things in the ordinary course of your daily life that a small tweak here and there can collectively have that huge impact.

It's interesting. Before we get on to Net Zero U2 and the program, I want to just take a little step back because I was chatting to a guest yesterday and we spent a lot of time with Darren Murph from GitLab talking about experimentation and test and learn and just trying to look at programs and see, well, is this working? And if it's not working, let's do something different. And of course that Net Zero U2 journey started somewhere else, didn't it? It started with kind of a program at the beginning, which then morphed into Net Zero U2. Maybe tell us a little bit about where you started on that journey and what you found and why that changed.

Yeah, absolutely happy to. So that was a program called COU2, which I'll come on to in a moment. But I think your point about this iterative nature is a really important one. And particularly for Swiss Re or large financial services organizations where there's usually a history of things having to be polished and perfect when you roll them out. The whole evolution of Net Zero U2 is the antithesis of that. So it's very much around it being co-created, it being fluid, it being responsive to feedback, it being trying and testing things. And actually even beyond the ESG impact of the program, the impact on the culture at Swiss Re to see that we can do things in a different way, that we can bring in a human language and a non-corporate tone plays to a bigger agenda alongside the sustainability piece. And interestingly, for us, our leadership imperatives around being courageous, acting at pace, and creating joint movement. And it's not always easy to find initiatives that really put those imperatives to the test. But with Net Zero U2, it is a courageous program. It is doing things differently. We are doing it quickly and rolling things out on a monthly or or quarterly basis, and the very aspiration of it is to create that joint movement. I think that's a really interesting piece in terms of the cultural dynamics of something like Net Zero U2 alongside the sustainability impact. But to come back to the second part of your question around CO2, that was something that we've had in place for a number of years, was market-leading at its time and certainly a USP externally, which basically provided cash subsidies for employees buying eco-friendly products. So if you bought a new fridge, we'd provide a list of environmentally friendly alternatives and then we'd give you a cash copay towards that. So very impactful on one sense from raising awareness around the environmental impact of home appliances or electric bikes or whatever it might be, and genuinely had good traction. But what we increasingly came to realize was a couple of things. One, that it was actually really driving a consumerist behavior, which wasn't necessarily aligned to sustainability goals of the everybody running out and buying new fridges. So with hindsight, over time, a little bit counterintuitive. Secondly, it didn't really have that educational awareness component that, as the momentum of climate awareness really developed, we felt was a missing piece. And finally, culturally, was very much around what can I get? Whereas our aspirations were far more around how can I be informed, what can I contribute, what difference can I make. So quite an important philosophical shift away from the consumerism, much more towards what we've now got, which is a platform around education and awareness at its core. So we are trying to help people understand their own carbon footprint, and the impact that that has on the planet. And then using that education and awareness to drive engagement, to drive action, to drive impact.

And as you said, a very small tweak away from what can I get— a fridge, an electric bike, whatever— to what can I give? What can I do?

Yeah, absolutely. And how can I learn? And the whole platform that we've created has been around raising that awareness. So whether it's through a series of challenges and understanding what impact you have on eating meat, for example, or on recycling, or through a series of quizzes. So actually that really education piece, or through calculating their own carbon footprint. So one of the core features of the platform is employees have the ability through an app to calculate their own carbon footprint. And that's all benchmarked against local and national norms. So we're not trying to compare somebody in Hyderabad with somebody in Zurich, obviously very different ecosystems. But through that, you can see what your global carbon footprint is. And then through the series of deeds or challenges or quizzes, learn and understand how you can do your best effectively to reduce that, that carbon footprint.

And how did you create that program? Was that co-created with employees, or was it created by the organization and then just put out for employees?

Very much co-created, very much co-created. And that was a key aspiration, that this wasn't a top-down program that was shaped in a darkened room by senior leaders and then rolled out. So right from the very start, But it was co-created. We ran a number of workshops, ran a number of focus groups, had a cross-functional team working on it to come up with the ideas, which were then iterated. And then once we'd launched— and I'll come back to those early days in a moment— but once we'd launched, really keeping that employee engagement and involvement as a cornerstone. So we take regular feedback on, what worked, what didn't. We asked for ideas or themes that colleagues would like to see us work on and getting them actively involved. And the key thing for me, Scott, is the ability to tap into what people think is important. So there was no concept of saying, we want to nominate you and you and you to work on this program. It was, we're looking for something fresh and different in the sustainability agenda. Who wants to get involved in it? And actually that untaps a huge amount of personal passion. And inevitably you have the champions who want to get more involved, which is great, and we need them to leverage and be champions. But the more you start sharing stories or people start talking at the water coolers, as we can now do back in the office, more challenging during lockdown. You start spreading that news and then people catch the bug and get involved in it. So for me, it is that iterative employee-owned, co-created, changing dynamic to it, which has made the program so far so successful.

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The whole idea of people learning about climate change and sustainability, learning about what they can do, and then committing to that small thing that they can do, and the multiple of those small things times 130,000 or 150,000 things rolls up to make a huge difference, which is great. And I guess from an internal communications perspective, what you've suddenly got is potentially hundreds or thousands of cracking stories that you can then use to sell the program further around the organization.

Yep, absolutely. With two elements, the practical element and the emotional element. So that whole shift in tone of voice that the program represents to connect to the why, to talk about our personal lives, to talk about the emotional side is sometimes pioneering, I guess, for, for a financial services organization which tends to be more left brain, more fact-based. And those are important elements to it, but, but dialing up the EQ, particularly on a topic like sustainability, is, is really important. And then secondly, absolutely, on, on those stories, we've got one of the largest Yammer channels in Swiss Re, so one of the most active channels, and people are going in there and talking about recipes that they've done that they've seen are eco-friendly or sharing a story around how they've made small changes in their life or that they've calculated their carbon footprint and what did they learn as a result. And that very much then creates that momentum of storytelling. And inspires others to take action. So we've now got over 4,000 colleagues who've downloaded the app, calculated their carbon footprint, and are getting engaged with the program.

Love that. And I was, I was minded there as you were talking about stories and emotion of actually a film that you put out on LinkedIn yesterday of one of your colleagues in Australia who has taken part in the program. And she talks. And you know what? Storytelling is so powerful because she wasn't talking about the program. Sustainability and all those other things. She was talking about the fact that when she was younger, there was a bushfire near where they lived and she had to run in and she had to help her dad cut down the trees at the back of their house because they thought their house might burn down. It didn't, which was great. But now she's now facing, you know, still somebody living in Australia, drought, floods, forest fires, some of the worst that we've seen in decades or ever. And for her, that made that very, very real. And she's committed to a couple of small things. And I thought, I just thought that was so powerful, you know, so powerful.

Absolutely. And that to me, and Deborah's story is absolutely an exemplar of what we're trying to do with this program. So I'm certain, Scott, that whilst I've talked about some of the facts and figures of Net Zero U2, it's that emotional connection of somebody saving their photos from an approaching forest fire that will resonate and stick with your listeners. And that is just one of many of those stories that we've got. And I think does two things. One, shows that personal connection that people have and are prepared to talk about it. And secondly, brings an element of courage into an organization. So for Deborah to share that story on a global LinkedIn platform, I think is a huge testament to to her courage and to the power of her story.

Yeah, for sure. And actually, just when you said that there, and it gave me the willies when I heard the line yesterday in her film when she said, "We were cutting down trees and my mum was loading the family photographs into the back of the car." That was, oh yeah, gives you the shivers. It's interesting when, and you just mentioned there, facts and figures. And I think often we, I think particularly around climate change, we hear, tons of CO2 here and measures like that. And I don't think the average person, which includes me, are kind of tuned into what that actually means. So I wonder when you had the program there and you were launching it or in that rollout phase, what was it you used to get people on board? How did you get them involved? How did you drive that involvement?

And you're absolutely right that sometimes this can just be all-consuming and we don't know at what point to engage with it.

It's too big. It's just, it feels too big. It's global. It's global warming. I can't fix that.

Exactly. But this is where the personal engagement around calculating your own carbon footprint, for example, was the real hook into the program. So with the great partnership that we've got with Deidster, you can look at the app and see what the impact is of certain actions, and it then makes it a very micro-digestible piece of information. And what we've done around that individual piece is give examples of what does a ton of CO2 look like. So it's a return flight to a European city is about half a ton. A ton is about half an annual usage of your car for commuting. So we try and make it real, relevant, and real and tangible. But it goes beyond just sort of the pure calculation bit because yes, that's one bit and that's useful, but it's the broader education piece. So for example, we've literally just come to the end of our Earth Week, Net Zero U2 Earth Week, which has had a whole series of employee-initiated events to help people demystify it. So we've had talks on how you could cook a climate-friendly Indian meal. We've had an employee talking about their beekeeping hobby. We've taken people out on tours of an organic farm. We've had a recycling drive. So Could I say that as a result of that, we saved 0.25 tons of CO2? Probably not. But what I can say is talking about how to turn leftover beer into bread or how to use water irrigation or somebody coming in and talking about sustainable investment will have a significant impact on your mindset. And that's one of the really exciting things. And I'm so proud of the impact we've had of Earth Week, that whilst we started this, Scott, as a global program and we continue to run it very much under a global umbrella, all of the local initiatives during Earth Week have all been regionally led. So we've activated a great network of regional champions who have taken the initiative to get local speakers in or to organize a tree planting activity as we have in Armagh, or sending out seeds to our UK colleague to have a sunflower growing competition. These are all things that our colleagues are coming up with. And as sponsor of the program, yes, I can set the framework of what we're trying to do. I can talk about the purpose, but the key purpose is to activate that individual energy, creativity, innovation that doesn't need steering or shaping. And again, coming back to the cultural impact, that for me is as big a win for us as it is the actual impact that it will have on, on climate action.

Yeah, I'm a huge believer in, in localization. I think that is one of the most powerful things from particularly from a communications and culture perspective that any organization can do, because to your point earlier on, The CO2 footprint of somebody in Hyderabad versus Zurich is very, very different. What's going to really float their boat is very, very different. And it's about how you give people the space and the time and the empowerment to do things that, well, you do something that'll make a difference where you live. That's the powerful thing.

Absolutely. And without it being controlled or measured or approved, this is very much built on trust. It's built on community, it's built on creating joint movement, and that actually goes deeper. So you look at those climate actions, for example, that I talked about. Historically, we very likely would've wanted manager sign-off that you did actually do the action that you committed to. And, you know, did you do all of the deeds in the app to get your recognition? We took a decision very early on that this has to be about trust. And with that trust comes empowerment. So we believe people when they say that they've had a vegan meal this week instead of a hamburger. But if they didn't, well, you know, okay, they didn't. But I think that moving away from that control and micromanagement is a huge step forward, particularly when you've got something as personal and as purposeful about your carbon footprint And it would absolutely be counterintuitive to micromanage what the regional champions in APAC, EMEA, or the Americas want to do during Earth Week, just as it would be to track what they've committed to doing.

Yeah, for sure. And I think just giving people that space and time to look at this whole area in a way that resonates with them is really, really powerful. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie.

For more.

I wonder what the feedback has been from colleagues. Have you done any kind of surveys or have you got any feedback from them?

Yeah, very much so. So we were keen when we set out the program to have a number of measures of success. Part of that was awareness of the program, engagement in the program, number of people who've downloaded the app and calculated their footprint. The number of climate actions that we've committed to, the number of CO2 tonnes that have been bought with carbon certificates, as well as then some of the qualitative feedback. So all of those hard metrics, if you like, are all showing great trends, but actually the biggest sign of success is the engagement with the programme and the fact that we have so many people turning up for Earth Week, that we had such engagement with Net Zero Day, which we ran for the first time last year, the number of people who were completing quizzes or deeds, we can track all of that as a sign of engagement, as well as those constant open loops of people saying what they want to change about the programme. And I think that's again really important that we listen and we act because it is an agile programme. An idea comes in and we can tweak this on the platform, we can change this in the communication. And people see that the feedback is taken seriously and it's real time. Now we have to be careful that it doesn't end up with 1,000 flowers that bloom and run off in every direction, but there's very much that employee engagement with the program. An additional element, which I think really unique and been really powerful has been investing in the colleagues who are engaged with the program. So if we're believing them to be our best ambassadors, we've spent time doing zero labs to help them with their communication, how to tell a story about net zero, how to write a good LinkedIn post. So it, we haven't just left it to chance. But there is obviously a natural energy that comes from it. We've also wanted to make sure that we've got the very best chance of success with those individuals telling a great story in their town hall, talking to their colleagues, leading a team meeting conversation on these things. And that's all helped embed that sense of engagement and impact as well.

I love that, which is brilliant for you because you get really good stories delivered, but it's also brilliant for them because they feel invested. Invested in.

Absolutely.

Yeah, super. I wonder when, you know, if we go back to the very top of the conversation, James, when we talked about, you know, all those little micro changes rolling up, do you have a sense of kind of what you've achieved so far with the program through maybe carbon saved or offset or?

So I mean, I keep coming back to those 130,000 actions and that all adds up to significant global saving. We can tangibly measure the carbon removal certificates and we've co-sponsored about 1,000-1,500 tonnes of direct removal through investing in carbon certificates, but the sum of those incremental is into the thousands of tonnes.

Globally.

Okay, amazing. So it really, really does make a difference.

It really does. And creating that joint movement, which is so compelling and part of the essence, is absolutely what we're seeing.

And how do you keep it going? I mean, that's the big thing for me. I think that, you know, I think big initiatives like this, there's a big bang, there's loads of focus. Isn't it great? The CEO's on board, the senior execs on board, and, you know, 6 months down the line, it's kind of tipping away. But, you know, the next new thing comes along.— and it doesn't quite get forgotten about, but it maybe takes a back seat because it's not today's, you know, new shiny brand new spanking thing. How do you keep it front of mind with people, just practically on a daily basis?

So I think very practically, it's making sure that we keep that human connection. So what keeps it engaging and keeping it fresh is the personal connection and the personal stories. So, and those are constantly refreshed, so you have that human element which keeps it fresh. Secondly, because it is an iterative programme, we can keep it rolling. So, you know, we've never done an Earth Week before, and that's been the focus of this week. We've then running some video competitions of the changes that people have made through the platform. We keep on a quarterly or 6-monthly basis a new series of challenges. So if you go into the app, you'll find every 2 or 3 months a new series of challenges which will give you new information, new education, and new tips on things to do. Then later in the year, building up around COP27, we've got a whole other series of events. It is literally just those small things that now you could do this and now you could do that. So that's one element. The human element I've talked about. And thirdly, activating these regional champions who could come up with far more ideas that are locally relevant than ever we could in the, in the center.

Yeah, for sure. And of course that talks back to the empowerment piece, doesn't it? And the power of that.

Absolutely, absolutely. So yes, it takes effort, it does take work, but I think the fact that there is so much energy in the organization for it, because you can see it contributing to something very tangible and very real, that's what keeps it fresh as as well.

Let me think, just conscious of time now. Last question. If organizations are kind of starting to go down this route, they're thinking about, well, that guy James spoke some sense there, maybe we should do something. What would be that first thing that you think that an organization should do? Bearing in mind that not all organizations have tens or hundreds of thousands of employees, that there's very many organizations that have a couple of hundred employees. I wonder what would your advice be to them in terms of how they could take maybe some of the learnings or elements from your program and use them in creating a program of their own?

Absolutely. And this clearly doesn't need to be a massive programmatic effort. So I think there's 2 or 3 things, Scott. The first is start a conversation. Don't be intimidated by it having to be something big or shiny. Start a conversation. Secondly, create the space for individuals to bring their ideas. I think once you start that conversation, organizations will be amazed at the energy and creativity that exists within their colleagues to start doing things. And then thirdly, to recognize that every single action— can create a joint movement that can have a bigger impact. So whether you're an organization of 2 people, 20, 200, or 20,000, everybody can make some small changes which will create that joint movement that will have a bigger long-term impact.

And once it gets going and gathers that momentum, as you've seen, that then it becomes nearly a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get the ball rolling and off it goes.

Absolutely. And a conversation costs you nothing. Yeah, I love that.

A conversation costs you nothing. I think we'll leave it there on that, on that high note. Um, James, where can people find you online if they want to pick up the conversation or find out more about you or the program?

So I'm on LinkedIn at James Hartley, and very happy to engage in conversation and, and share insights of what we've done and help anybody who's starting out on this journey. Because I think not only does it have a massive cultural impact if you get it right from the empowerment, the trust, and the human element, but it also has a massive potential impact on our planet. Brilliant.

James, it's been an absolute pleasure. I've loved the conversation. I think it's been really insightful. I think the program you've put together is amazing, and it's just great to hear how successful it's been. So thanks a million for sharing your story.

Thanks very much, Scott.

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