Output details

Sustainable Cultures Engagement Toolkit

This toolkit helps organisations develop and implement an appropriate strategy for internal communications about sustainability. It was the culmination of a two-year research project led by Greene and funded by Johnson Controls.

Greene found that previous work on achieving greener workplaces focused on engineering/architectural/technological solutions and overlooked the human level at which workplaces are used. The Sustainable Cultures project addressed sustainability from a socio-technical perspective, recognising human behaviour as an integral factor in the adoption of more sustainable workplaces and work-styles. Research methods involved in-depth interviews with employees and experts, workplace observations and iterative workshops in three case-study organisations.

The research identified four sustainability cultures (‘campaigner’, ‘housekeeper’, ‘libertarian’ and ‘pragmatist’) with differing perceptions of who should bear the cost of sustainability – employee or company. Greene brought these together with additional insights in a toolkit providing organisations with processes (workshop templates, recommendations and exemplars) to help develop an understanding of attitude variants existing within the company and suggest appropriate sustainability strategies that align with company culture.

A user-centred approach to design for sustainable behaviour was adopted, drawing upon the work of Wever et al. (2008) and Lockton (2011). The project explored motivating sustainable consumption through design, and extends methodologies developed during the Welcoming Workplace project (Greene, REF Output 1).

Alongside the toolkit, Greene wrote a peer-reviewed paper for the ‘EuroFM Research Symposium’ (Denmark, 2012), gave two keynote presentations at ‘CoreNet’ (France, 2011 and UK, 2012; the first was awarded ‘Best Presentation’) and delivered an UNWIRED ‘Communicating Sustainability’ seminar (UK, 2012). The toolkit is currently being tested with five pilot organisations and Greene is developing a related invited paper for the Smart and Sustainable Built Environment (expected 2014). This work also led to Greene’s joining the EU-funded project SusLabNWE (€252,000) to build on approaches developed within the different context of the domestic environment.