Empower Change guide

Who is the guide for?
Empower Change is designed to guide you as an individual who wants to lead change and engage employees.

What is the aim of Empower Change?
This guide will speak to you personally, and show a process and robust structure that you can follow whatever your current role/job. It is about you as a change facilitator. In addition to giving you guidance and tools to empower your organisation it will support and celebrate you as a change agent.

Author and Publisher
The guide was written by Adam Woodhall in his continuing capacity as an Associate with Carbon Smart and the hard copy was published by this highly respected consultancy.

How do I get a copy of the guide?
Receive the digital guide by signing up to the Inspiring Sustainability monthly newsletter:

Or send a request via the contact page

---

Testimonials

The guide has received the following testimonials from sustainability practitioners in a personal capacity:

Mike Barry, Head of Sustainability, M&S: “Employee engagement is crucial to building a sustainable business. There is a growing body of literature on how to engage but little as practical and down to earth as Woodhall’s work.”

Dr Tom Knowland, Head of Sustainable Energy & Climate Change, Leeds City Council: “Provides a very useful ‘recipe’ for organisations to follow when pursuing a change agenda”

Paul Hutchinson, Environmental Manager, Wates Group: “What Adam has done with this guide is prepare, equip and support businesses who are beginning their change management journey”

Thom Cooper, Lead Sustainability Advisor, Yorkshire Water: “Employee engagement and behaviour change are perhaps the most talked about challenge amongst sustainability professionals. The Empower Change guide breaks this down into a practical and effective process that, without being prescriptive, supports the reader to develop their own approach to ensure colleagues are at the heart of business strategy.”

Aleksandra Njagulj, Head of Sustainability and Innovation, Bouygues: “I very much enjoyed reading Adam’s guide, which helpfully lays out the complex change management theory in ‘plain’ English. This is one of those texts when “…of course, makes sense, I should have thought of this…” pops up more than once during the reading. More importantly, this guide inspires action, and I’ll be trying out some of the techniques in near future.”

Simon Goldsmith, Head of Environment, Greenwich University: “Staff are the catalyst for sustainable change within organisations. This slim guide provides powerful insights and ideas to improve your success in helping empower staff to become agents of sustainability change that is also good for business.”

Rachel Starling, Environment Manager, HS1: “For those looking for a step change in performance improvement, Adams guide brings to life a process which will be an essential tool for businesses/environment managers.”

Nicholas Adams, Sustainability Projects Officer, Orbit Living: “The Empower Change Guide has helped us to challenge our existing thinking and review our approach to engagement. Having staff ‘on-board’ is key to delivery of the sustainability agenda and this guide is a tool which can help you achieve this engagement, helping you to empower individuals from across your organisation, no matter what their specialism.”

Kate Cathie, Environment and Sustainable Development Coordinator, University of Chichester: “The Empower Change Guide is an excellent tool kit for any organisation on its sustainability journey and it will help us embed behaviour change as we move forward with our JUMP engagement programme.”

Richard Foulerton, CSR Manager, Allianz Insurance: “Employee behaviour is critical to achieving any company’s sustainability strategy. This is a useful guide to empowering employees to embed sustainability in the culture of their organisation.”

David Esdaile, Environmental Sustainability Officer, London Borough of Tower Hamlets: “The Empower Change guide has given me a new perspective on how to run a successful engagement programme and that empowering staff is key to any programme being successful. The guide is clear and sets out a process to follow in easy steps. It has changed the approach I was going to use in engaging with staff across my organisation and I now feel more confident about running the programme. This guide is a must for anyone planning an engagement programme in their organisation.”

Alex Nunn, Head of Campaigns and Communications, Action for Happiness: “We all know organisational change seeds at the grassroots; but for it to really flower, it has to have a strong stem to support it – that structure is exactly what Empower Change gives you. It is a route map to actually making change happen.”

Pauline Giroux, CR Professional: “The Empower Change guide is very clear and easy to follow and is particularly suitable for companies/individuals who are quite early on in their sustainability journey and wondering how to approach it. The guide makes the process of empowering colleagues and embedding sustainability look a lot easier and ‘less scary’ than it can seem.”

Laura Vickery, CSR Professional: “Employees are the life blood of any organisation. And so it follows that positive organisational change relies on their support. Yet achieving this can be easier said than done. This guide is an upbeat and encouraging companion to anybody seeking to make this happen. Good luck!”

Ryan Clark, Energy Technician, City of London Corporation: “In this guide, Adam has successfully pulled together concepts of behaviour change, sustainability, change-management, project management and leadership into a format that is easy to follow. It is an invaluable resource for walking through the journey from the initial idea of creating a more environmentally sustainable workplace, to letting go once embedded sustainability has gained its own momentum.”

Wendy Bixby, Sustainability Officer, Colchester Borough Council: “I have found the guide interesting and useful as it helped me to identify that Colchester is taking the right approach to engaging with both staff and communities.”

Janette Waterhouse, Procurement & Facilities Manager, FMG: “This document is well written and a great source of information for both companies starting out and an excellent refresher for companies who have energy saving measures in place, to check they are still in place! I have also learned some things I was not aware of previously and will be investigating them further.”

Foreword

By Ramon Arratia, Sustainability Director EMEAI, Interface Carpets

"I’m so glad that Adam has taken the initiative to produce this guide. It’s a great idea, and one of those ventures that begs the question: ‘Why didn’t someone do this before?’

I’ve been privileged to see at first hand how a sustainability mission gives a tremendous sense of purpose to employees – how it energises people and spurs them to go the extra mile. The transformation can be remarkable, both for the organisation involved and for those who work within it.

Of course, having a sustainability mission in itself is not enough to produce such results; you need to be able to bring everyone along with you, and to be able to encourage a sense of communal purpose. Moving towards sustainability is about successfully managing change. That’s what Adam’s guide will help you to do.

It’s particularly good that this book has been designed for use in more than one way – to suit the requirements of different people in different situations. My experience is that it’s important to be flexible when change is in the air, and to listen to what people are saying about the changes you are encouraging.

There’s nothing quite so empowering for employees as the knowledge that their daily working lives are no longer solely ruled by the profit motive but instead are guided by a new mission to improve society and the environment. Behavioural change delivers the quickest payback on sustainability of any strategy I know.

However, employee engagement is not an activity for the sake of it; it has end-goals, such as reducing waste, saving energy, cutting down on emissions, or designing better products. It is worth remembering that at all times.

This guide is long overdue and I’m sure will be of great use to the growing number of people who are looking to steer a path towards sustainability. If you follow it carefully, then the results have the potential to be spectacular."

---