From the Front Lines: Internal Collaboration & the climate change agenda with Ericsson and SAP
The following article was featured on Triple Pundit in 2017 as part of a series by me, as Chair of the first European 'Companies Vs Climate Change' conference in Brussels in October 2017.
I spoke to two companies doing some good work engaging their own workforce on climate change. Both Patrick Blankers from Ericsson and Marcus Wagner from SAP spoke at the ‘Companies Vs Climate Change’ conference in Brussels in October 2017. Together, attendees explored practical ways to collaborate and take learnings back to their companies, to trigger a shift in the way business is done, to address climate change.
A lot of us have probably spent a fair amount of time hearing or talking about external collaboration and work – at conferences or in our own work – but genuine internal engagement and collaboration is a crucial approach that’s often left out by a lot of companies I’ve known. Not only does good internal engagement help to mobilise resources within an organisation, but it’s often a major boost to scaling impact on important issues like climate change. I get why it’s often left out – it can be hard to measure the value of doing it and can prove difficult to retrofit into established work cultures, systems and ways of working. But it’s still important – essentially, it’s mobilising and informing your own army.
So I asked Ericsson and SAP, who spoke at CVCC, how they’ve engaged and collaborated internally on climate change. Some common themes emerged – a clear focus, leadership from the top, an investment of thought and resource to engage internally were a few.
Patrick Blankers, Ericsson’s Europe Sustainability Program Manager, talked about their approach to both external and internal collaboration to address climate change.
‘Climate change is probably the biggest challenge for our planet and all living creatures on it. Ericsson strongly believes that the ICT sector has a role to play in providing practical solutions that can help to build a low-carbon society and slow down climate change. Our industry has a unique potential to enable other sectors move towards a low-carbon economy and achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Our own research shows ICT solutions could help to reduce GHG emissions by up to 15 percent by 2030, amounting to around 10 gigatonnes of CO2e. That’s more than the current carbon footprint of the EU and US combined. However, ICT must be developed and rolled out with the intention to address climate change, measuring carbon reduction progress and with an explicit aim to support decision-makers to make the right decisions.’
I asked Patrick about the importance of internal engagement and collaboration in Ericsson’s aims to address climate change. In short, it’s a core part of… everything. From internal targets to innovation projects, it’s embedded throughout the organisation, talked about regularly and is part of individual and team targets throughout the business. Ericsson has targets to reduce its GHG emissions in areas like business travel, car fleet, product transportation and facilities. The 2020 goal is to reduce GHG emission by 30%, as compared to the 2015 baseline. In the previous period, Ericsson exceeded its emission reduction targets, which helps to build trust among employees and among customers.
Ericsson’s global sustainability vision to be a responsible and relevant driver of positive change for society drives a focus on climate change. Sustainability and climate change is an agenda item at every internal sales and leadership summit and, as mentioned above, targets reflect this priority.
It’s the actual work that counts more than the agenda items, though, and many across Ericsson are working in practical, measurable ways to deliver great work that innovates and reduces impact. This is reflected in their R&D, for example: they are continuing to explore innovations that make alternative energy sources economically feasible, in order to enable a significant reduction in diesel consumption. They recently succeeded at this when they deployed the world’s first “pure solar” 500 Watt solar-powered radio site in 2016 in Myanmar. For the first time, solar energy was more economical than diesel. The project was recognized with the GLOMO Award 2017, and it’s being referred to as a major reference in both internal and external communications.
Not only is addressing climate change good for delivering Ericsson’s vision, it's highly integrated in their R&D and business strategy, keeping them cutting-edge and an advocate of innovating technology for good.
So, Ericsson are an enormous company focused on climate change at all levels of its business. This is great news. The even better news is they’re not alone.
If you’re familiar with enterprise software, you’ll know SAP: they’re not only the market leader in it, they’re the world's third largest independent software manufacturer overall. Around the world, they employ 90,000 people of 130 different nationalities. Internal engagement – and engagement particularly around sustainability and climate change – is high on their agenda, and they’re clearly doing it well.
Marcus Wagner, SAP’s Director of Sustainability and Global Environmental Management was also the first speaker to kick off ‘Companies Vs Climate Change’ Brussels. He talked to me about SAP’s work to mobilise its workforce to address climate change.
‘SAP’s vision is to help the world run better and improve people's lives. To meet this purpose, we have committed our people and our products to address the world’s biggest economic, environmental, and societal issues and achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. To contribute specifically to Goal 13, Climate Action, we aim to reduce our global greenhouse gas emissions to levels of the year 2000 by 2020 – despite strong company growth. At the beginning of 2017, for example, SAP announced it would become carbon neutral in its operations by 2025.
Its recently-launched Environmental Policy outlines how employees can be part of SAP’s journey to achieve its vision and integrate sustainable practices into their work, through things like reducing waste and energy use and developing solutions that enable SAP customers to create positive environmental impact. Another focus area is improving the impact of corporate cars and employee commuting through carpooling, use of public transportation, and using carbon neutral fuel cards and electric vehicles (SAP for electric vehicles to make up 20% of its car fleet by 2020)Their sustainability champion programme drives internal collaboration across all regions, countries and lines of business. It includes more than 150 employees worldwide, raising awareness and enabling change to support SAP’s sustainability aims.
What they’re doing actually seems to be working well. In SAP’s 2016 annual employee survey, they ask how important sustainability is and how each employee contributes individually. 92% said it’s important for SAP to pursue sustainability and 82% of all employees contribute to SAP's sustainability goals.
Patrick from Ericsson and Marcus from SAP both spoke at ‘Companies Vs Climate Change’ 2017 in Brussels. Over three days they were joined by other speakers including Carlsberg, Lidl, Arcelor Mittal, Toyota, Helly Hansen, Walgreen Boots Alliance and others. The three days were packed with opportunities to pick up insights on how businesses can address climate change, share their own and grow their networks.
Delegates came from a range of roles in companies across Europe and added their own experience, questions and energy during interactive sessions and networking opportunities. It was a truly interesting and engaging mix that created new knowledge and action to make a difference.
