Insight

Employee survey at a German regional bank as a basis for its sustainability strategy

zeb uses “sustainability types” to illustrate how employees feel about ESG

zeb was commissioned by a regional bank to determine in how far the employees’ commitment to sustainability goes beyond mere lip service. This insight was important as the board members were developing a sustainability strategy for their institution in collaboration with zeb. The attitude of the workforce was to be included in the decision on how high the “green” targets should be set and how they can be communicated and achieved.

For the employee survey, zeb used general questions on individual sustainability-related behavior and, based on the answers, categorized the employees into six “sustainability types” that were developed by a zeb.business school research team at Steinbeis University. For example, a person who walks to the supermarket around the corner even when it’s raining is classified as a “person of conviction”; someone who always drives there by car is probably rather an “indifferent hedonist”.

“The model shows how strongly the different types are potentially represented within a workforce. This gives managers a better insight into where their bank stands in terms of sustainability and what they need to do to further promote the topic.”

Prof. Dr. Joachim Hasebrook, Senior Manager at zeb and head of the zeb.business school research team.

After all, a quarter of the bank’s workforce were intrinsically motivated “people of conviction”, while another two thirds belonged to various other types that can partially be motivated to also behave more sustainably through social and material incentives. Some of the management board’s first measures included the setup of an e-learning platform to collect, share and impart green knowledge, as well as the reduction of “printing infrastructure” to save paper.