By Jamie Carroll, Head of HR at AMP Clean Energy
With a passion for sustainability, AMP Clean Energy’s Head of HR Jamie Carroll has played a leading role in developing the Group’s ESG strategy. She has also led on enhancing employee experience and shaping a positive working environment. Jamie has now set her sights on embedding sustainability across the business by engaging employees to play their part in tackling climate change.
Why is behavioural change so important?
It’s great to see government and businesses tackling carbon emissions, but we know that it’s now up to individuals to make the wide scale changes that need to happen to achieve Net Zero. If everyone made some small changes to their lifestyles, we could make a huge impact! Ultimately behavioural change is all about making changes to how we heat our homes, how we travel and even what we eat. Changing mindsets and attitudes could really lead to large scale reductions in emissions.
What I have seen in my role at AMP Clean Energy, is that people want to work for a business which is invested in sustainability and is committed to making a difference. We are also finding that individuals are more enthusiastic and optimistic about the role they can play in helping to achieve Net Zero.
How can an organisation affect behaviour change?
If you look at human change generally, there are four basic principles: Educate, Engage, Empower and Enable. We’re fortunate at AMP Clean Energy that many of our employees are already passionate and well informed, in part due to our business mission to help organisations to decarbonise.
Digital platforms, which make it as easy as possible for people to make small changes, are a great tool to engage and empower employees. Climate change is a very serious subject but we can also make it fun and motivational by taking a ‘team’ approach to encouraging individuals to either compete or work together to reduce their eco footprints.
Cultural change doesn’t happen overnight and real behaviour change is about turning actions into habits. In this regard organisations can play a key role in supporting their employees to make changes – whether that is offering recycling options at work or putting up reminders about switching off lights.
What is the role of HR in driving behaviour change?
People are at the centre of changes at work and HR is at the centre of supporting and aligning people to change. HR has a responsibility to lead and educate its employees to ensure that they are clear on what the goals are and to help everyone understand and resonate with them.
The CIPD has outlined in recent reports the role of HR professionals in embedding sustainability into their organisations. HR practitioners are in a unique position – due to their connections across their organisations – to help employees engage with the climate change agenda whilst also conveying the company culture and engagement tools.
Why is employee engagement important to AMP Clean Energy?
AMP Clean Energy is a business which has gone through multiple acquisitions so it has been very important to bring people together as part of one team. We’ve introduced consistent ways of working and undergone a digital HR transformation to make it as easy as possible for people to do their job and access their wellbeing benefits. These initiatives are valuable to enhancing the employee experience at work and to shaping a positive culture and working environment.
People are our greatest asset at AMP Clean Energy and we want to empower them to play their part in fighting climate change and align their attitudes and behaviours with our company vision. We have also found that at interview so many of our applicants tell us that they want to work for AMP Clean Energy because they support the business mission to help organisations decarbonise.
What is AMP Clean Energy doing to influence behaviour change?
Our mission at AMP Clean Energy is to help businesses and organisations reduce their carbon emissions on the journey to Net Zero. Implementing our ESG policy is very important to us, and reflects how we engage with our customers, our people and ultimately how we run our business.
Sustainability sits at the heart of our culture, and as such it is important that we practice what we preach to our customers and our employees. We want to give our people, many of whom are passionate about climate change, the opportunity to make a difference at work and at home. We are partnering with the employee engagement tool Pawprint to help empower our employees to tackle climate change. Launching in the new year, the Pawprint app, will enable our people to measure their own carbon footprint and learn how they can reduce their environmental impact.
What are you doing at a personal level to reduce your own carbon footprint?
As Head of HR, I will be leading on the roll-out of Pawprint so it is important that I lead by example. I’ve been looking at my own lifestyle to see what changes I could make to reduce my footprint.
In my diet I have been eating less meat and enjoying more vegetarian meals. I am also lucky enough to live near local shops so I have been walking to the green grocers and butchers and supporting smaller, local businesses.
I also recently joined a gym which is just over the road from my house. This means that I no longer need to drive to a gym, so I have cut my road miles. I’m looking forward to seeing what further recommendations Pawprint will give me to reduce my carbon footprint in the new year.
