RHR 172: "Greening Culture" How to Drive Sustainability through HR with Graham Hill

Kyle Roed: 0:02

This is the rebel HR Podcast, the podcast about all things innovation in the people space. I'm Kyle ROED. Let's start the show. Welcome back rebel HR community really excited for the conversation today we are going to be talking about sustainability. And then some environmental thought leadership with Graham Hill. Graham is the founder and CEO of the carbon arts, they help fortune 1000 companies build climate literate, sustainability, enthusiastic cultures, via tools, such as live interactive and sustainability workshops. I'm super excited to dig into this topic. Graham, thank you so much for joining us today.

Graham Hill: 0:45

Thanks, Kyle, excited to be here.

Kyle Roed: 0:48

Well, we're excited to have you and you know, I think this is a topic that doesn't get a whole lot of air time in the HR community. So I'm really excited to kind of talk through that. But I view it as one of those areas that could could be a huge engagement driver, culture builder, something that we have been asked to look at in many of our corporate cultures. And so I'm excited to dig into it today. The first question that I have for you, Graham is, is you know, what, what motivated you to get into this space to jump into the world of, of environmental sustainability.

Graham Hill: 1:25

I'm clearly an entrepreneur, that that is crystal clear. And I really think entrepreneurs are problem solvers. And I've just always had a leaning towards environmentalism. And it just sort of became clear to me earlier than most that we had a real problem on our hands. And, and so you're very, very mission driven, I've been lucky to build and sell a couple companies. So I definitely didn't need to start. Another one, particularly one involved in such challenging area, which is behavior change. But I'm just I'm just really driven. I've, I think there's a beautiful green future just around the corner. And I also think we're in a lot of trouble. And so I just became really obsessed with the idea of how we move people from awareness to action. And, yeah, get to that beautiful green future as fast as we can.

Kyle Roed: 2:25

I love that. And I think I think you said it very well, where it's, you know, enacting behavior change, in a way that's lasting is is something that I think you, and all of us HR professionals could probably beat our head against the wall, about quite a bit. Yes. And it's one of the things that really fascinated me about the work that you do, which is the fact that you focus on climate literate, and sustainability, enthusiastic cultures. So it's, you know, the focus is really, culture change within companies. So what what motivated you to focus on that aspect of behavioral change?

Graham Hill: 3:06

Well, I've been at this for 23 years. So I've been doing environmental, environmentally focused last 23 years, I built one of the biggest screen sites on the web in 2004. With a tongue in cheek name called tree hugger, it's still going strong billions web pages later. So I've definitely been around for a while. Once, the thing that has really changed since 2004, when I started tree hugger is that we've got awareness, that's really high, which is awesome. And climate doesn't care about awareness. So climate just doesn't care about our feelings. So I became really obsessed with the idea of how do we move people from awareness to action? And so, yeah, so I'm very clearly in behavior change, and very clearly, in really building people's identities, so that it's a really it's a lasting change, and, and it sort of comes from deep within versus just something that 111 does, and then can, can do other things contradicting that, that action at some point.

Kyle Roed: 4:17

Absolutely, and I, you know, I think it's, it's a really great call out that, you know, there is a lot of awareness. Right. And I think it's, it's pretty, it's pretty rare that you'll find somebody that that says, No, climate change isn't a thing. I mean, there's some outliers, but and probably some work to do. But, you know, for the most part, the collective knowledge is that humans are doing this right. And, but, and I think it's, I think about it similarly to like eating healthy, like, we know what healthy eating looks like, but the actual behavior of eating healthy is extremely difficult. Yes, because it's, it's not necessarily easy. And so, I think about that in the context of of behavioral changes it really relates to our environmental sustainability. It seems pretty similar to me so. So as you think about the difficulty of that, of that behavior change. And as we think about that culturally within our organizations, where do you start? Because this just, it's, it's fairly difficult. And it's a big massive problem, that I think a lot of HR professionals are just kind of, not sure what, where to start or what to do.

Graham Hill: 5:30

So I think in a way, the fundamental challenge is this, this awareness to action it's knowing to doing is the big one. And in the environmental movement, which is gonna be similar to many of the other things that HR professionals look at. It was all about information. Right? But I've heard said, like, if it was just an informational thing, then we would all we would all have six pack abs and be millionaires. And we would have solved the environmental crisis, right treehugger would have done it, we got, you know, got a ton of information, but what what the momentum was able to do sort of get information out, get people to know, get the awareness. But really, what's important for all these same as you're talking about eating, and health, wellness kind of stuff, is how is the doing? So how do you get people to the doing, and that becomes much more about identity. And it's really challenging. So one thing that environmental movement and other movements have done really wrong is just really focusing information, information information, we get them the right science, people will understand and they will do the things. And it's just, it's just not the case. And so, our approach, despite having done a bunch of tech oriented stuff, we really went back to basics and realize that this is not an informational thing, we need to make this we need to look at behavior science, and we need to apply those principles. And so we do workshops. And so part of it is we're just we're not very logical as humans, so you may you, you could do yoga, or do your workout at home. That's the cheapest, that's the most convenient. Many of us have trainers or go to classes, even though it's much, much less efficient. And that's because we like being in community and other people inspire us. And so we view the same thing like we, you know, we will do some on demand videos and hybrid stuff and do our do our best with that. But where we really shine is workshops, where it's a cohort, so 2030 people and a teacher and a TA. And you're all we do mostly virtual, but you're you're in a room, quote unquote, with cameras on, you're interacting, and it we make it emotional, and connecting. And we do it in sort of public. And that is what the magic sauce is. And so if you can get get people to do it in community and get people to know that other people are watching, if you can build the social norms, that's when you start to get some real action. And really, if you are artists is largely about focus on action. And if you can get people to take action, actions actually form identity, you do a thing, and then all of a sudden, you're the kind of person who would do that thing. And so it works the other way also. So actions can really build identities. So we're really focused on doing it and community making the path really easy, and really personalized, generic sort of tips and that kind of stuff doesn't really do it, people are really busy, you need to make it personalized to work for them, meet them where they are, make it make that path really easy. And then carrots and sticks, you know, reward them for their behavior and, and really look find the bright spots and applaud them for the people that are doing that stuff. And, and that's the way you sort of get momentum you help people build their identities, as people that care about climate and the beautiful thing thing there is that then you come into alignment, most people are concerned, and rightly so used to be that this was the sort of scientific idea of the future. But now we see it on the Daily News. And so there is a lot of climate anxiety for good reason. And so when you start taking, understanding this stuff, and more importantly taking action, then you start to come into alignment and just feel better as a as a person. And so we think it's a very powerful thing to do and our major premise is that like what's right Eight is that these big companies have aggressive sustainability goals. Like it's really I'm quite frankly surprised, we definitely need them. But I'm still surprised that they exist. challenges though you got these small sustainability teams often, and not enough budget, and then the base culture of the company is the culture, culture is composed of the average, and the average person doesn't know much about sustainability, they, the average person thinks it's about straws and coffee cups and recycling, important things that we have to fix, but really a small part of the picture. And so we get them focused on on really the stuff, the stuff that matters, and get that get them moving forward. And, and therefore we can start to build a climate literate climate enthusiastic culture, and that's going to support what the sustainability team is doing. And what's what's clear is that we need to go a long way in a short period of time. And it's aggressive. And so we need the culture of the company, but behind the sustainability team, and we really need to make bring sustainability into every aspect of the business. Right, it needs to be that every job is is a climate job. And so yeah, our job at the highest level is to help them help move that culture. And the great thing about it is it makes people feel good and makes people appreciate their company. So it helps with the attraction and retention attracts new employees to the company and keeps them involved allows for sort of upskilling and moving into new areas, and it just just yeah, all works together.

Kyle Roed: 11:47

So you know, I think it's a, it's a fascinating approach. And it's a, it's a problem statement that I think many of us can probably agree to where it's like, you know, it's hard to get people to make, make change outside of something that would be kind of like novel, right? Like, it's almost like, hey, you know, biked to work this this one day, right? And you might get a small, you know, a small percentage of your, your organization to do it. But, but it's very minimal, or like, you know, cleanup on Earth Day, stuff like that, right? You know, it's like, it's like the, hey, we're gonna, you know, mission accomplished, we planted a tree, go now go back to work. And it burned that carbon footprint? Well, yeah, you know? Yeah, it's so I'm curious, as you think about these, as you think about these cohorts, and as you work with these organizations, what, what is a typical audience, or participant profile look like? Like, how do you? How do you select who sits through these things? And, and in order to make as broad of a ripple culturally as possible within the organization?

Graham Hill: 12:54

So that's a little bit of a complicated question. Because we do have a product called network mapping, which asks a bunch of questions, you sort of survey the staff, and it allows you to really understand the network. And that allows you very strategic about the people that you would want to get for whatever behavior change, you're trying to move throughout the organization. So that's a separate thing. And we're starting to do a bunch of that, and we really liked doing that. But generally, we're not meant we're not mandatory. And so it's, it's people just sign up, and I think that's a, that's a good way to go. I mean, we would love it from a finance perspective, if companies made a mandatory on one hand, but on the other hand, a lot of people, there's a lot of people listening to this call who know this better than anyone. There's a lot of mandatory training, and a lot of people don't don't like it, and, and Kyle, you might want to take our workshop, if it was sort of offered, but when when you're forced to take it, you might develop a bit of a different attitude towards it is different. It's not it's it's nice to sort of elect and not be forced. And so, yeah, so we, the client usually chooses, they could send it to the whole company, they could send it to a division that could send it to a team. And people people sign up, but it's it's it's voluntary. And we like that. And I think this is like their big theory of change, is that study suggested you get about to about 25 30% of a population, that's when things tend to flip. And so I think it's largely that the reason that that that happens is that if the thing is sort of fundamentally, right, morally correct, like it feels like the right thing, then with when you get 25% 30% of the company doing it, there's just enough momentum and you just those other 70% they just know it's the right thing to do. And so it just flips and so we're generally I would say in a situation really almost on a planet. very little, but also within a company where probably have a few percent of people who are aware and taking action, you know, three, four or 5%, somewhere in there. And so we really view our role as how do we find those people, and be coaches and cheerleaders and get them taking action and making it visible both physically and digitally. And expand that percentage is grow and build some momentum, grow it and grow it until you get to 25 or 30%, when the whole thing will flip. And that's when your deniers will come along, because everybody else is doing it. Like we are very much we we are social norms is how we work. I mean, we care so much about what people think. And we do the silliest things. I mean, look at this rip gene thing that we've had for like the last decade. I mean, if you were an alien coming to earth, you'd be like, what is what is that all about, but that's just how we work. And you know, just we just need to acknowledge that, and that's okay. And so the social norms that we need to build are just of people being responsible, and just living a lower footprint life and making appropriate decisions. And at least we can focus on the solutions at this point, that have little to no sacrifice and sometimes benefits. And so you know, great, great, healthy vegetarian food. So solar often is a great way to save you money, if you can afford to have that on if you own your home, or whatever. Electric cars are turning out to be great from a performance but also find financial. And so we want to really make those positive and make it negative, like it's still, we still got so far to go like the number of I, you know, I still eat some meat. I'm a sort of weekday vegetarian ish. But I go to these environmental events, and they're still, you know, serving bottled water and meat. And I think it's a good good sort of example of where we're at. We're just, we're just, we're just not there. We've got a long way to go. So we got to build those social norms.

Kyle Roed: 17:18

Yeah, I think, you know, I think I think that's really interesting. And, you know, a great call out Yeah, I mean, yeah, making it not mandatory. Listen. I'm sure everybody is listening to this, it just like smiling, like, yeah, that's like the, you know, hey, HR needs you to take this training, like, nobody's nobody wants to be there. And it's just like, it's, you might as well just check the box and sign the dotted line that you took the training, and then go about whatever you were doing prior. Yeah. So I, you know, I think it's powerful. I, you know, I am curious on the, you know, to go back to kind of the social norms piece, you know, I think, I think one of the, you know, one of the challenges, or one of the perceived challenges, as probably the right word, is that being sustainable, is more difficult, or it's more time consuming, or more expensive, or it's more, it's harder. And so I guess, first question, maybe two questions. The first question is, is that actually true? Or are there are there? You know, is that kind of a misconception that we can we can address? The second question is, is, do the social norms outweigh that for people after once they realize, and once a, once you see kind of that network effect, and the community start to kind of hold everybody accountable? Where, where it doesn't feel like it's as hard because this this culture is kind of supporting it?

Graham Hill: 18:38

Yes. So I think that the, the fair answer, in almost any question to do with the environment is it depends. So the details are very important. And so I think that's, that's important. So yeah, it absolutely depends. There are some, you know, great solutions that I just highlighted that are really, really compelling. And, you know, solar, often will save you a bunch of money in fact, was can be a fantastic investment. EVs are starting to be as well depending on on your situation, how much you drive a lot of detail. So and you know, it depends on how you look at things. Certainly eating a healthy organic vegetarian diet in the long term may save you a lot of healthcare costs, but it's like hard to hard to say so depends on sort of the lifecycle that you're that you're looking at. So so it depends. I would also say that from you know, the in terms of expense for people that can afford it and are not balancing their checkbooks on the monthly I think it is such a great thing to support because it that brings up the volumes and lower the costs and really helps make things happen. So and the second quest second part of that question was I forgotten?

Kyle Roed: 20:04

You know, it was around the kind of that that societal, that societal change. So you know, once you hit kind of that 25 or 30%, and then you kind of get like the almost like peer pressure for lack of a better word, and you start to see,

Graham Hill: 20:18

Oh, yes. People, even if it was more expensive or more difficult when people absolutely, I think we, I think, well, we do a lot of things that were there. There's, I don't know, like, like social norms are like, we used to throw garbage out of our cars in the 70s. Like, that was a car thing. Now, you literally wouldn't do that. If if you were alone in the middle of nowhere. And you there was 0% of you getting caught. It's just, it's in us. It's part of us. It's like you don't do that. So I think that there, yeah, there there. There are a lot of things that we'll do that are just about just about social social norms, like, yeah, absolutely. They are so powerful. They are how we work. And what's really interesting about them. And that's why we do this network mapping is that the social norm is that there's simple contagions and complex contagions. And most of the most of the the environmental stuff is complex contagions. And so the way that we make those decisions, go solar go renewable energy, getting me V change your diet is by looking around us and looking at the people, the 10 people closest to us that we respect the most. And that's really how we make a decision make decisions. And so if you get a few of them out of those 10 doing a thing and you intuitively subconsciously consciously know it's the right thing to do that's really going to get you thinking about whether you should adopt that that new.

Kyle Roed: 22:02

Absolutely, you know, I think it's I think about it like the I think we're about it from the standpoint of like a new hire, right? You know, so let's say we hire someone new in the organization if they, if they walk to the trash can and they throw something that's recyclable into the non recyclable trash. And somebody sitting in the lunchroom says, Hey, wait a minute, that goes recycling, you missed? Yeah, I guarantee that new hires are not going to do that again. Yeah, right example. It's not necessarily about being punitive. But it is about like having like, like that, that same level of culture, just like if somebody were to do something that was unsafe. Right. And that's the so that's kind of what I think like, I think about this, it's to me, it sounds very similar to like building a safety culture, right? Where it's like, you build awareness, right? And then you got to have like, an accountability lever, where it just becomes ingrained, where people call out things that don't look right or right or changed. And it's kind of the same, you know? Yep. And that same approach,

Graham Hill: 22:59

the behavior that you might have had in an another company, in the new company, you're looking around to figure out how do people do that here. And if they do it differently than your old company, like, it is very unlikely that you're going to do what you used to do your your, you're going to change? And so, you know, that's also I think we often really think that we are so we just were our political leanings, or views or whatever, are just so solid, but it's proven again, and again, if you're relocated into a different area. So if you're, you're right leaning, and you're relocated into a left leaning or left leaning and relocating, and over time, your views are going to shift. It's just sort of the way that it works. Not all of us, but, but but generally. So that's how we make decisions. We really care about what people think and what the what the appropriate behavior is.

Kyle Roed: 23:58

Absolutely. You know, I think it's, it's fascinating. And so, you know, and I think, inherently, it makes a lot of sense. I'm curious, as you think about the, you know, the network mapping tool that you've mentioned, what, what prompted you to realize that that was something that you needed as you were building out your organization and starting to figure out how to how to make this sweeping change. Because to me, it's, it's it sounds brilliant, like, like, oh, there's so many use cases for this. So what Yeah, absolutely. And

Graham Hill: 24:31

it can be used for, for many things beyond sustainability and for evil as well as for good. That's we won't be able to sign something before that we work with them. Just joking. Yeah, well, I think. I think we just sort of intuitively realized, hey, if you've got 100 people, you're trying to get change to happen. You got 100 People in 100 bucks. You could give $1 to each person but You might be better, maybe better give $10 to 10 specific people that might be much more effective. And we read this book called, change how big things happen by this guy, demons and Tola. And we just got really inspired about it. And that basically is talking about the complex is he talks about his complex versus simple contagions. And how that works. And so yeah, it's not it's not all about what Oprah says, for the simple contagious and maybe but but for more complex contagions. It's about the people that around you like that. That's what and so you want to understand what that network looks like within a company such that you can enlist those people and basically those the ones you want to put money on. And so we ended up finding a scientist who worked with Daymond on this and knows all the all that sort of algorithms to create these very cool network diagrams of the company itself. And we asked a bunch of questions at the same time, we asked a whole bunch of sustainability questions. And so what comes out of it is we know okay, well, if we want to get sort of information, stuff through the company, these are great people to talk to you. If we want to actually get changed to change to happen. These are good people to talk to, you also might find out, Oh, these are our detractors, like it's good, it's good to know who they are. And you also may find, oh, these people are actually not very connected at all, those are probably most susceptible to most susceptible to losing them. Because they're not connected. And you might find also, hey, we seem to have like the company is really divided into two. And we need to build more stronger bridges between them, because we've only got maybe a couple of these sort of wide bridges. And otherwise, don't you so you learn a ton about the company makeup and and who the who the people are. And so this allows you to more strategically get changed to happen. It's very cool. We're, we're, we're very excited about it.

Kyle Roed: 27:16

Yeah, look, I love this could probably there's probably a whole nother podcast I could just nerd out on. Yeah, that kind of activity. But I'm curious, you know, I want to maybe close out my you know, maybe my final question before the flash round is, you know, I think we got a lot of HR professionals on here that I guarantee or, you know, understand the importance here and want to help help make our organizations more environmentally friendly. What would be one thing that you would recommend that we do in our organizations, in order to start this process moving forward, and to really, to really to really start driving some of this change?

Graham Hill: 28:04

mean, it's hard, because, because, of course, I just want to answer work with us, because it's sure it's true. Like we have some of that

Kyle Roed: 28:11

here right now. We'll have that link in the podcast show notes. Open it up. Yeah.

Graham Hill: 28:15

I mean, I think you want it the ideally, the eight, the HR people themselves want to get involved, and you can, you know, like we and us other people, you know, there are a whole bunch of ways to do this. But you know, for example, like we have a one hour workshop, which is really going to help you run a cart carbon calculator, understand what the components of your footprint are, understand the big six, the major solutions. And, and so that kind of thing, like just getting people, it's understandable that most people don't know much about this. And then most people think it's recycling and straws and coffee cups, and that's concept, but it's not. And so just sort of getting that base level of knowledge, I think can be really good. And it's, and it shouldn't be scary, people should understand, like, you know, we can meet people where they are and others others can as well. So I think getting out getting a little bit of that would be really important. Green Teams, I think are a really powerful thing. And many, many companies are building them and that's really like finding your passionate people. And you know, there may not be enough a ton of budget and sustainability and so this is a way to sort of get more people involved start start building the culture. So I think building a green team is is is really helpful. You know, I think you want if you're trying to get sustainability to happen in the organization, you try to find who laptop cares about this stuff and talk to them and enlist them and you know, a lot of this is just building the building the social norms and showing the company that company cares and, and yeah, getting getting the leaders you sort of got to have Sandwich. Absolutely. So we're we're we definitely do a lot of that where we're we can come from the bottom Get, get a lot of people involved and engage climate literate climate enthusiastic. And then if you've got some good people at the top sort of starting to really talk about this, then you can sort of sandwich the organization in a very positive way vegetarian sandwich, obviously.

Kyle Roed: 30:22

There you go. Love it. All right, Grant, this has been a wonderful conversation. We are approaching the end of our time together, I want to get your responses to the rebel HR flash round. Are you ready?

Graham Hill: 30:34

That sounds great. Yeah, this was very fun. This is like my heaven. I mean, it's so fun to talk to HR. We're part of like we've been doing, you know, we work for some really big companies, Amazon and Chanel and 18 t and like, some we got some great clients, but we're mostly sustainability people. And we're wondering where HR is, I know what some of them we talked with HR, but but we haven't talked to HR much. So what we're excited to do so. All right.

Kyle Roed: 31:05

I'm excited. I'm excited to share this message as well. A question number one, where does HR need to rebel?

Graham Hill: 31:12

So where I go to with this, and I really haven't spent any time thinking about it, but where I go to with this is I think it's a really hard line, probably. But I think authenticity is the thing. And I think there's a lot of sort of legal concern and therefore sanitizing of things. And I think I think people like real people and real companies and transparency and just sort of unvarnished, and when things are overly sanitized, and and we're always so worried about legal and we're forgetting about the the sort of the fundamental idea behind whatever rule or regulation there is, I think you really you really lose something and people get less connected to the to the company. So I guess, I guess, yeah, just transparency, authenticity. And, yeah, just just, yeah, HR being cool. I realized that's, that's a very, very difficult thing in our world, you know, in our legal world, but I just think that there's really something to be said, for that. And I think that that's kind of thing that can help you retain people and I think retention is a is really important institutional knowledge that walks out the door when you lose some someone is a really, really big deal. So yeah, um, yeah, authenticity and transparency, and just yeah, how can HR be just more human?

Kyle Roed: 32:58

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. You just summed up one of my recent keynotes. Oh, yeah. Nice word. I'm gonna use the word cool, though. I didn't use the word cool. But that's really what I was saying. Like, be cool. Come on, man. Be cool. Yeah, yeah. Question number two, who should we be listening to?

Graham Hill: 33:17

So I, HR, I mean, HR probably already is, but I think behavior science is the thing. And so that's who I think you should be listening to as behavior scientists really looking and I have a number of podcasts, the one that the one that comes to mind is Katie milkmen. But there are there are a lot out there. I'm sure Yeah, her just called Choice ology. And then just looking up some other ones. There's one called the behavioral design podcast. And yeah, I'm sure there are a bunch. So yeah, I think behavior science is just so so important. I, via Ted end up being friends with a guy named Dan Ariely, who works out of Duke and wrote predictable rationality and all those books and yeah, I just think listening, listening, listening to those people's is, that's that's what I would suggest.

Kyle Roed: 34:24

I agree. Yeah, I could, I could geek out on that stuff all day. Danielle is fascinating weather research. So I'm with you. Final question. How can our listeners reach out connect with you learn more about the work that you do and and ultimately, hopefully use your service?

Graham Hill: 34:41

I'd love to hear from them. I'm Graham at the carbon arts.com The carbon arts.com gram. And LinkedIn is a great place as well. I'm just trying to figure out what my I think if you searched Graham Hill tree hugger, the carbon arts So are something LinkedIn, you'll find me. But LinkedIn is another great place. And we'll, we'll figure it out, we'll find work, but it's the carbon arts.com. Okay, perfect.

Kyle Roed: 35:11

We'll, we'll make sure we put that out there and and it's so that our listeners can connect open up your podcast player, click in and check it out, gram, really appreciate the work that you do and the work that you're doing for the world. And just fascinating topic that I think HR needs to get a little bit more engaged in. So I appreciate you sharing your knowledge with us today.

Graham Hill: 35:32

Thanks. I love it. Yeah, please, for anyone who wants to reach out whether they're interested in working or just want to chat about this stuff. Yeah. I'd love to help I care about the planet and where we're going and Yeah, happy to help help out in whatever way I can.

Kyle Roed: 35:49

Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Graham, have a great rest of your day. Thanks, Scott. All right. That does it for the rebel HR podcast. Big thank you to our guests. Follow us on Facebook at rebel HR podcast, Twitter, at rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebel human resources.com. The views and opinions expressed by rebel HR podcast are those the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent. No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast. Maybe