Sustainability & INDIA INCBEYOND THE BOARDROOM Code Green: Just Do it

It's no longer just a top-down approach for India Inc, employees are making sustainability their business, too     Six months ago, Infosys freed up two executives from their daily grind, gave them their own labs, financial grants and a licence to chase ideas in alternate energy. Vishwas Vidyaranya is now trying to produce electricity from bacteria and Deepan is looking at seawater as a source for power, in Mysore and Chennai, respectively.  Executive co-chairman S Gopalakrishnan handpicked the two after an in-house competition on alternative energy sources, organised by Infy's 'sustainability' team. If the two find a new source of energy for their employer, it could first power Infy's Mysore and Bangalore campuses, and later its centres around the country, says Rohan Parikh, head of the company's Green Team. If they don't, Infy would still have got what it wanted from the competition — get the boardroom agenda of 'sustainability' to reverberate across its rank and file.  Companies like Infosys, Wipro, Hindustan Unilever (HUL) and Mahindra & Mahindra are discovering that it is not just enough for CEOs to talk about sustainability; executives have to live it out, and over time drive it, too. That's why many companies are going all out to get employee buy-in into their sustainability programmes: from recognising and rewarding efforts among staff and funding events they organise, to turning them into sustainability evangelists within and outside the company.  "Sustainability is at the heart of our business," says Nitin Paranjpe, CEO and MD at HUL. "The Unilever Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) takes a value-chain approach to sustainability, right from sourcing to consumer use and disposal of our products. Employees have a key role in enabling this." To survive, every company will eventually need to become sustainable, says Amita Joseph, director of Business and Community Foundation (BCF). "It is important to get buy-in from all your stakeholders including employees," she says.  Conversely, not being sustainable presents a business risk, says Beroz Guzdar, senior vice-president, Group Sustainability at Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M). "The idea is to make our employees sensitive to both the environment and the communities around them, while also drive home the point that not doing so amounts to a business risk," says Guzdar.  "For instance, we have to tell our plants to conserve water because without it, there can be no work." Taking it a step further, Guzdar's team also asks its plants to try and improve the water tables of the catchment communities, in the long-term interest of the company.  Back in the office, M&M's sustainability team acts as an advisory body for the company's 11 verticals to map strategies, actions and processes that take into consideration climate change, natural resource constraints and local people. Suggestions for sustainable practices come from everywhere — including the shadow boards at M&M, who have been asked to ideate around the theme of sustainability. But it is programmes like the Employee Social Option (Esops) and initiatives undertaken by the individual verticals that clinch employee buy-in. Employees doing well in sustainability receive a congratulatory letter from CEO Anand Mahindra, himself a huge advocate of it.  Companies are also discovering that a commitment to sustainability can help attract and retain talent. "This helps to increase the motivation levels among our employees, given that they find their jobs more fulfilling, being driven by a larger purpose," says Paranjpe. Adds PS Narayan, head of sustainability at Wipro, "A younger workforce is much more clued in to sustainability and may actively choose to join only organisations that have a strong sustainability commitment."  "We welcome ideas from anywhere, whether it's from employees or even our supply chain," says Infy's Parikh. "And we do whatever we can, in terms of funding and infrastructure, to support it. It's not about the money, but about becoming more sustainable as a company."  "Sustainability means different things to different people," says Wipro's Narayan. "So trying to communicate to employees about what it is, in a top-down manner, will not work. At Wipro, we feel employees view sustainability in their own way." Some might be passionate about it from the environment perspective, others may be more concerned with the community. But the best way to get employees engaged with the idea is to let them do their own thing, Narayan says. While his team tries not to impose the agenda, the initiatives come with a caveat. The sustainability team is available as a mentor and a possible funder, but employees must take the projects forward on their own.But at HUL, head of sustainability Meeta Singh has found that a top-down approach can be effective, too. During the company's recent drive on health and keeping fit, Singh says, "Somebody at the top starts off a movement — it could be Doug Bailey, Nitin Paranjpe or Dhaval Buch — and the next thing you know thousands of employees are following that, and doing things like running in the Mumbai marathon".  The company takes such movements forward with appropriate initiatives, says Singh, and looks to functional heads to cascade ideas about sustainability down to their juniors. To give some structure to this process, HUL has tied up with Cambridge University in the UK for select employees to do a course on how to embed sustainability with communities. Five functional heads have already undergone the programme. But it's not just the leaders; employee engagement on sustainability is a must for future targets at HUL.  Before HUL's Mumbai staff moved to their new campus in Andheri, Singh received a host of suggestions on how to make the premises more eco-friendly, from planting more trees to having low-flow taps in the washrooms.  Then, there is the idea of employees as sustainability champions. "There is always a small, core group of employees in every location who take the extra initiative to make that big difference," says Wipro's Narayan. "We call them the sustainability evangelists, and the most effective way to get employee buy-in, is to have these evangelists talk to their colleagues. That creates more ready receptivity than imposing ideas from the top."  labonita.ghosh@timesgroup.com