CSR Strategies for Enhancing Climate Literacy

Here's three ways that companies can better enable employees (that don't have a "climate job" title) to act on climate:   📚 Invest in company-wide sustainability education and training for all employees It's not enough to just set and share a climate target. In order for action to happen across an organization, goals must be accompanied with ongoing education to define and contextualize relevant objectives and terminology. Employees and teams must understand how it relates to their work and day-to-day operations and why it matters to the company and themselves. This can include general education about climate change, from organizations like Climate Fresk, or more curriculum-style learning from organizations like Kite Insights or OnePointFive (opf.degree).   🛣️ Empower staff that are passionate about climate issues (even if it's not in their job title) to act on ideas Green groups within companies are a great way for climate-interested employees to gather and connect. It's also a powerful place for challenges and ideas to surface from those seeing it firsthand. There is tremendous potential to empowering those groups with clear pathways to have their ideas heard and resourcing them to put ideas into action. A lot can be learned from people like Drew Wilkinson and what he did at Microsoft to grow their employee resource group to 10,000 staff and implement tangible projects.   📏 Bring context-based, climate metrics into business unit KPIs Instead of climate and sustainability metrics being a siloed process, teams are a lot more likely to be engaged in climate progress if it's in terms they already understand. One of the best ways to do that is to integrate context-based, climate-related metrics into existing business unit KPIs. This allows teams to do their own analysis when making decisions and decentralizes sustainability. Some companies like Allbirds and Oatly have made this part of their branding, including CO2 equivalent per carton or pair of shoes. Companies must start investing in employees that are passionate about climate action. It is one of the most critical, yet underinvested climate solutions today. We need people in places throughout organizations with the knowledge, skills, and structure to act. Not just small, siloed teams asked to do too much. And from the thousands of people I've heard from, the demand is there. The pages below are direct from Environmental Defense Fund's Unlocking Corporate Climate Innovation report. [Full report can be found here: https://lnkd.in/esVc8Ykr]

Community is a climate solution. In December, I helped ClimateVoice organize a webinar called "Green Team Success Stories: How Employees Advance Climate Action at Work" and now, we're following up with a blog post that goes a level deeper! This article provides an exclusive glimpse into how employees from Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Pinterest, and Salesforce have self-organized into employee sustainability communities (often called Green Teams) for years, showcasing their successes, challenges, similarities, and differences. Their efforts have shifted the dynamics of who can engage in sustainability work at these companies, created industry leading green innovations, and in each case, unlocked more resources and support for sustainability work. I authored this month's Connect the Dots newsletter to recap the session (find a link to the recording in the comments below) and explain just how powerful and transformative these communities can be. ✋ Green Teams work in organizations of all shapes and sizes and mostly run on volunteer labor, enabling individuals to align their passion and purpose with their work, while providing valuable career development opportunities and improving employee attraction and retention 🕸️ Their decentralized structure breaks down organizational silos, fostering connection and collaboration across the entire workforce, while increasing overall climate literacy 🪴 They uniquely embed sustainability throughout every part of an organization, driving innovation while reducing environmental impact simultaneously. 💡Most importantly, they transform sustainability from an operational task driven by a single team to a core part of organizational culture, making sustainability part of everybody’s job in the process. We learned that the challenges employees face doing this work are more similar than different: lack of place (no sustainability community), lack of time (burnout, layoffs, and competing priorities), lack of influence (employees are not considered a critical stakeholder), lack of knowledge (little to no climate literacy in the workforce), and crucially, lack of support (no top down sponsorship from a Chief Sustainability Officer or executive). The good news is that all of these obstacles can be overcome, and the employees in Green Team Success Stories: How Employees Advance Climate Action at Work told us how each had uniquely done it in their organizations. Read on to learn more and share your experience with green teams in the comments below. Help us tell your story! Kevin Houldsworth Mia Ketterling Alyssa Chen Prashansa Sonawane Nidhi Kaul Céline Zollinger Antoine Cabot 🌱Lindsey Peterson Rohan Nijhawan Sam Gooch Zoe Samuel Holly Alpine (née Beale) Van Riker Aiyana Bodi Chris Bradley Patrick Flynn Manav Goel Nina Panda Kimberly Forte Abraham Chen, MBA Ryan Eismin, PhD Peggy Brannigan Dana Jennings Elizabeth Shelly Maddie Stone Cecilia Emden Hands 🌱Kati Kallins Lucy Piper Katelyn Prendiville Nivi Achanta

Last week, someone who’s been working in climate communications for over a year quietly admitted they still didn’t totally understand what “lowering emissions” meant. Not the general vibe of it, but the actual why and how. I loved their honesty. It reminded me how often specialists in the space continue to throw around terms that even insiders don’t fully grasp. If we want the public, policymakers, and private sector to act, we have to stop communicating like we’re at a scientific conference. Here are 5 tools I use all the time to make complex climate and science ideas land: ✔️ The “Grandma Test” Can you explain the concept to your grandma without losing meaning? This test forces clarity without condescension—and it’s one of the fastest ways to reveal jargon you didn’t even know you were using. ✔️ Metaphor as a Bridge Metaphors are powerful shortcuts for understanding. For example, instead of saying “emissions reductions,” try: “Imagine your home has a slow gas leak. Cutting emissions is like finding and sealing that leak—before it gets worse.” It may take longer to say (a communications faux pas) but we process metaphors faster than data. ✔️ Chunk the Concept Break big ideas into bite-sized parts: What is it? Why does it matter? What can be done? Who’s doing it well? This format creates digestible flow and gives your audience mental “hooks” to follow you. ✔️ Visual Storytelling Not every concept needs a paragraph. Sometimes it just needs a sketch, a diagram, or a comparison chart. ✔️ Mirror the Audience Before I write or say anything, I ask: “What does this audience care about most?” Meeting people in their worldview is half the battle. I’ll be sharing more of the frameworks and strategies I use in future posts—but if your team is trying to translate climate science or sustainability language into something people actually understand and act on, C3 can help. Let’s make it make sense. 👉 Feel free to reach out or follow along for more tools from the Climate Communications Collective playbook.