This year’s theme for Earth Day is ‘Invest in Our Planet’ and focuses on engaging governments, institutions, businesses, and citizens to do their part. With this in mind, sustainability in 2023 has become as much the responsibility of each employee as it is the wider organisation’s.   

But how do you make sustainability everyone’s job?

Sustainability might not be the core focus of every role but there is an activist in us all. At Microsoft we believe there are ways to unlock this in employees and empower them to engage with sustainability in a way that is authentic and relevant to their role.

For the past 20 years, I have spent a lot of time in the ‘S’ of ESG. Alongside communications and storytelling, I now have the privilege of focusing on the ‘E’ of ESG. I’d like to share four ways we at Microsoft have found effective in helping make sustainability everyone’s job.

#1 Vision and mission

Does your vision and mission clearly align with sustainability? If employees know that their work ties in with the mission of the company, they can feel empowered in making sustainability their business too. Businesses have an opportunity and a responsibility in sustainability so look at your company’s mission and if you need to influence work with the CEO to weave in sustainability goals.

“At Microsoft, we have a strong purpose-led mission: ‘Empower every person on the planet to achieve more.”

Victoria Oakes, Chief of Staff for Sustainability, Microsoft

#2 Collaboration is Queen

To make sustainability everyone’s role, break down silos to make it easier for everyone to work together and foster a community that will collaborate for the greater good. At Microsoft, three things helped us to tackle this.

First, we created a sustainability board where we picked people in each area of the business to represent their teams in sustainability. This forum created a safe space to collaborate, share blockers, challenges, ideas and innovation, and disseminate information. Scaling the work and sharing knowledge is also critical, so having a board has really helped us to develop ‘champs’ in the business who share their insights via their board team lead.

Secondly, we created a dedicated channel on Teams that connects the wider business and gives us a place to share opportunities, wins, training and ideas. We often do social events centred around volunteering, which is not only a good way to give back but also a way to form closer connections with the extended team.

Lastly, having an approachable and credible Chief Sustainability Officer is critical to help galvanise people who want to become part of something that isn’t always their core remit

#3 Demystify sustainability

At Microsoft we have a Sustainability In Action badge that helps us to train the company in all things sustainability, from our own goals and pledges to our narrative, tools and products. We also have regular training and learning sessions with our core team present, so people know who to approach for different kinds of help, support and insight.

Another way to help educate and train people on sustainability is by leveraging world events to tell your story. Earth Day and COP, for example, are great opportunities to educate people when they’re most engaged. We also recently published the Microsoft report on Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap, to help businesses grasp the importance of sustainable transformation. It’s also imperative to remember the importance of social impact. Creating social value and purpose whilst doing business gives companies the opportunity to give back authentically. Companies that can do more should do more, and those that invest will go further. Here at Microsoft, we’re proud of our social impact programs both locally and globally.

#4 Reward and recognise

When people feel valued and recognised their wellbeing is improved as well as their company engagement, it’s also a great way to build community and drive momentum. We always use our dedicated Teams channel to recognise those who complete training, make progress or sign deals. In fact, we’ve recently launched our Sustainability Star of the Quarter Award, which recognises those who make an impact in this space across the business.

Stay committed to your sustainability goals

To wrap up, I want to stress the importance of bringing energy, experience and passion when galvanising cross-discipline teams throughout the business. Walk the walk, stay driven, and commit to building a programme that breaks down silos and promotes collaboration. Invest in sustainable strategies to help you achieve net zero. Look for ways to recognise and reward sustainability efforts, and ultimately try to tie in sustainability and ESG with your company’s core mission and vision.

Not only will it help you make progress towards your sustainability goals, but it’ll inspire a lot of people along the way.

About the author

For the past 20 years Victoria has spent much of her time in communications and the purpose world. Currently holding the position as the Chief of Staff for Sustainability at Microsoft, Victoria leads program management, employee engagement, strategy and thought leadership for the sustainability business. Victoria cares deeply about ESG and how companies can balance business and purpose. She believes companies that can do more should do more and that these purpose levers can drive positive growth and innovation. Victoria also holds a trustee position with African Development Choices, is a judge for the Purpose Awards and won a National Social Impact Award and Platinum Club Award for the innovation she drove in raising awareness of inclusivity.

Find out more

Microsoft Sustainability – products for a Sustainable Future

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

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NHS England has a vision for the future of how healthcare in the UK is delivered. This video highlights how technology can help to make these issues a thing of the past.

As John Newton writes in the foreword to the National Information Board’s Annual Report: “As recently as 2014, the NHS was declared the highest-ranking healthcare system in the world on quality, access and efficiency.  Nevertheless, the size and scope of its services, […] seems to have hindered its ability to select and adopt some of the best digital technology […] A new, more holistic view of health and a recognition that services need to put the patient centre stage, also generate new requirements and opportunities for digital approaches.”

See what this means in real terms with this video, enabling you to enhance the experience of  engaging your patients, empowering your health teams and, ultimately, optimise your clinical and operational effectiveness:

This video highlights the path to enter the “digital world”, such as being able to chat with healthcare professionals online and booking appointments through mobile apps. All helping to relive some of the complications of accessing citizen access to health & care services. Offering health service open hours that suit your patients, allowing them to access prescriptions and health records online empowers citizens to self-monitor their healthcare.

Microsoft are proud to work with the NHS and is committed to supporting NHS’s digital aspirations of using data and technology to deliver the Sustainability Transformation Plans. We are aligned with the NHS at local, regional and national level to support you in your efforts to drive transformation in patient experience and health outcomes.

Our partners help us deliver this vision, read more about some of the fantastic results health institutions are experiencing today!

Start the path to Digital Transformation with these Health Innovators:

Smarter responses with Alcove

Alcove’s IoT-powered care technology enables care workers to respond to adverse events in near real time, rather than relying on inefficient scheduled checks. Behavioural data analytics help move away from a reactive, call-for-help model towards something a lot more proactive and preventative. In-home data can tell family or formal carers when mobility is declining, people are sleeping badly, not taking their medication or not eating properly (or equally when their conditions start to improve after the right interventions). Support can then be provided on site by a carer, or remotely, where appropriate, using simplified communication aids. Spotting changes early enough can prevent conditions deteriorating and improve outcomes.

Read more

Rapid Financial reporting with Cloud2

Royal Liverpool & Broadgreen University Hospitals (RLBUHT) NHS Trust, managing a budget of over £400m and 6,000 staff, RLBUHT has placed emphasis on streamlining processes to drive greater productivity for staff and more efficient service delivery to meet the needs of the large number of patients.

Responding to this requirement, Cloud2 developed the Coeus solution which is built on their Meson business intelligence portal. Using this, RLBUHT were able to quickly and easily connect Cloud2’s pre-built Accident and Emergency (A&E) data model with their A&E data. Through this, the Trust were able to reduce time spent waiting for finance reporting from
2 days to five minutes.

Read more

Cutting costs with the Cloud: Elastabytes

An NHS Foundation Trust operating 3 hospitals and several clinics in London. With over 9,000 staff and over a million patients a year identified that there was a real risk of data loss. Due to outdated on-premise servers, the Trust were unable to scale data storage and processes to their needs in peak usage time and when their data servers went down it often took days to resolve.

By migration of their servers to the Azure cloud. By implementing SQL Server as PaaS the Trust were able to reduce on-premises costs, as spending money on servers, power and air conditioning was no longer necessary.

Not only did this reduce costs but the Trust can now scale automatically so they are covered for maximum workloads. Scalability has meant the Trust is only using the resources that they require at any one moment, and vastly improved backup and restore routines mean that in the event of a server failure at the worst possible time, the Trust will be right back on track with no chance of data loss.

Read More

Paperless with FlowForma

Barts Health NHS Trust, which is currently the largest NHS Trust in England, were previously bogged down with a time-consuming, paper-based process structure, which lacked visibility, Bart engaged with FlowForma and a local partner to deploy a more streamlined process using the FlowForma BPM.

With FlowForma, they avoided the need for complex functional specifications, which resulted in rapid prototyping and instant responsiveness to their HR department. Changes, which the hospitals were accustomed to taking months, could now be made instantly; forms, templates, fields and layouts could be ‘tweaked’ on the go. As a result, Barts has improved their process visibility and traceability, increased productivity and started to benefit from seamless reporting with instant responsiveness to their HR department.

Read more

UK Data Centres: keep your data in the UK

Earlier this year, Microsoft announced the introduction of UK data centres to provide cloud based services for businesses and public sector organisations that have difficulty hosting data outside of UK soil.

With the UK data centre comes the opportunity for NHS organisations to re-think how they deliver services – from internal IT and data analysis to managing finances and enabling small and medium enterprises to provide innovation to business units within the NHS.

Using Cloud can save NHS organisations time and deliver greater efficiency. With more and more NHS organisations requiring extra storage through PACS (Picture Archiving, and Communications Systems), connected devices, and clinical applications, the requirements for flexible and unlimited storage is evident.

Read more

Innovation in the UK healthcare economy is being driven in buckets. The top down approach of creating a 5 year forward view, with a ‘paperless 2020’ vision, supported by the National Information Board projects, creates the mandate to allow change.

Microsoft is supporting this change with our technologies and investing in proving the value of it. With engagement from Healthcare organisations, Microsoft can partner with you to deliver value back to your organisation.

The post Health Innovators you should know about: your path to Digital Transformation appeared first on Microsoft Industry Blogs - United Kingdom.