10 Steps to Becoming a Carbon Neutral Business

Page 19 STEP 05: GET PEOPLE ENGAGED LM WIND POWER’S APPROACH TO ENGAGEMENT Employee engagement was not the first priority in our drive to go carbon neutral. This was neither a deliberate nor particularly useful position, but we simply had to focus on getting the main workstreams launched. Around six months into the program, we started the wider employee communication with a clear ambition to provide the simplest explanation of carbon neutrality as possible. Knowing that something with so many technical elements and difficult words is rarely very engaging, we simplified where possible and applied the visual metaphor of balance to help people relate. We visualized carbon neutrality by using a weighing scale, showing a balance between emissions on the one hand and reductions and offsets on the other. We also created visuals for other key parts of our program such as where our emissions came from, with descriptions of our emission sources that were easy to understand. We use these key visuals across multiple media whenever we are talking about carbon neutrality to help reinforce our core program. The single most successful way of engaging stakeholders on carbon neutrality has been the use of experiential learning through a simple cardboard game called “Go Carbon Neutral in 30 Minutes”. We developed the board game to engage the global leaders of the company on what we had embarked on with CleanLM and it worked exceptionally well. The concept involves having teams up to 15 people simulate how to take a fictive organization carbon neutral. In the process, they need to agree on the best route, financially and reputation wise. It has since been expanded to other groups such as new employees and external audiences at various events in Denmark and one occasion in Brussels. Although simplified, feedback is that the people who have played it know what carbon neutrality is, how it can be achieved by using different measures and that it is a balancing act between various aspects such as implementation ease, how long different measures take and the brand value associated. All change starts with awareness and the playful learning concept of our game has been a successful approach that we will continue to build on.