CSR : Involve our colleagues!

Engage your key players in your CSR approach – “6 Min. to understand” with Pierre Léonard. Midoricast: Podcast #223

CSR: “We had two conferences on sustainable development. We were just sitting on our chairs… and it was boring.”

This sentence, Pierre Léonard heard one day in a large company, and it illustrates a problem that many CSR leaders face: how to truly engage their teams in the sustainability transition?

In this episode of Midoricast, the “6 Minutes to Understand” series, Pierre Léonard shares concrete examples, participatory tools, and practical keys to transform your employees into change makers. From active awareness to collective involvement, from targeted training to transparent communication, he shows that a successful CSR strategy is not based on slides… but on committed women and men.

Because a sustainable transition is built with, and never without, those who make the heart of your organization beat.

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Why this section?

We accompany companies implementing real and measurable ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) practices. Pierre trains and supports them in this transition. Our approaches are different but complementary: we encourage, he supports.

This choice poses a real challenge: where to draw the line?

Some companies mentioned here do not meet our current criteria, and we would refuse any collaboration with them unless they initiate concrete change. But that’s precisely where Pierre comes in: his role is to start this transformation.

This podcast does not aim to judge but to inspire. The goal? To encourage rather than discourage, to accompany rather than exclude.

Let’s commit together to a circular, sustainable, and inclusive economy. Listen, reflect, act… in six minutes.

Listen to this podcast Engage your key players in your CSR approach via our YouTube channel (subscribe: thank you!):

French: The full transcript of this podcast is available as video subtitles in five languages: French, Dutch, German, English, and Spanish.
Dutch: De volledige transcriptie van deze podcast is beschikbaar als ondertiteling van de video in vijf talen: Frans, Nederlands, Duits, Engels en Spaans.
German: Die vollständige Transkription dieses Podcasts ist als Untertitel des Videos in fünf Sprachen verfügbar: Französisch, Niederländisch, Deutsch, Englisch und Spanisch.
English: The full transcript of this podcast is available as video subtitles in five languages: French, Dutch, German, English, and Spanish.
Spanish: La transcripción completa de este pódcast está disponible como subtítulos del vídeo en cinco idiomas: francés, neerlandés, alemán, inglés y español

Podcast sequencing Engage your key players in your CSR approach:

• [00:00:34] Introduction to the podcast and the topic
• [00:01:08] Why involve your key players in your CSR approach?
• [00:01:55] First step: awareness
• [00:02:24] Available tools
• [00:03:19] Example
• [00:03:35] Second step: active involvement
• [00:03:56] Example
• [00:04:13] Internal challenges among different departments
• [00:04:24] Sustainable hackathons
• [00:04:42] Third step: training
• [00:05:24] Breaking down silos
• [00:05:31] Communication
• [00:05:41] Transparency
• [00:06:26] To sum up: how to involve your employees in your CSR approach
• [00:07:17] The Week (Frédéric Laloux)
• [00:07:32] Episode closing

Podcast transcript Engage your key players in your CSR approach:

Michel: [00:00:00] This podcast project is an initiative created and produced by the nonprofit “The Podcast Factory Org” with sponsorship from “transforma bxl – Innovation Playground”. Since January 2025, and for five years, we have also been sponsored by “Plugin Company”, our preferred charging stations and charging card operator. “The Podcast Factory Org” is very proud to be a member of “KAYA – Coalition of Ecopreneurs” and to collaborate with the “Love Health Center”. You can find all episodes of all our podcasts on the “What’s Your Story dot be” website.

Intro Jingle: [00:00:32] You are listening to “The Podcast Factory Org”.

Michel: [00:00:34] Welcome to a new episode of “Midoricast”, your podcast about positive environmental initiatives. “Midori” means green in Japanese, “Cast” refers to broadcast, and we are in the “6 Minutes to Understand” section with Pierre Léonard, to whom I hand over the floor!

Pierre Léonard: [00:00:48] Hello and welcome to this new episode. Today, we will address a crucial question that many HR managers ask themselves, and which echoes a theme we’ve tackled in the previous episode: how to effectively involve our colleagues in the CSR approach of our organization?

Pierre Léonard: [00:01:08] First, why is it important to engage your key players in these sustainability efforts? We’ll start with an obvious truth: without the commitment of your employees, even the most ambitious CSR strategy will remain dead letter. Why? Because they are the ones who, day-to-day, implement the actions that will make your company a more responsible actor. I recall a conversation with a manager—called “Comp & Ben” (Compensation & Benefits) in the concrete sector—who told me literally once about awareness building, “We had two conferences on sustainable development. We were just sitting on our chairs, and it was boring.” Not exactly the ideal way to mobilize the company’s key players. And pardon my French, but it was pretty dull.

Pierre Léonard: [00:01:55] This is precisely the kind of top-down, passive approach that must be avoided if you want to create true engagement. So what should be done instead? First, it is crucial to raise awareness to create a common culture. So the first step to engaging your employees is awareness—active and participative awareness. It involves truly making your employees understand the stakes of sustainable development.

Pierre Léonard: [00:02:24] For this, there are several proven tools. For example, workshops such as the Climate Fresco, which allows a playful understanding of climate change mechanisms and ways to mitigate it to a certain extent. Another example, the Digital Fresco, particularly relevant for discovering the impact of our IT use on the environment and ways to reduce it again. There’s also the Autumn Workshop, which makes us aware of our ability to reduce carbon emissions by combining individual and collective actions, etc., etc.

Michel: [00:02:57] These are things you actually offer (Pierre Léonard: Yes, indeed…) to companies.

Pierre Léonard: [00:03:00] Things I propose among many others. But what’s important is that they work. I worked with an engineering company, for instance, that rolled out its workshops across its entire staff and as a result, not only was a common culture created around these issues, but the grassroots began spontaneously to propose initiatives.

Pierre Léonard: [00:03:19] For example, a group of engineers identified and proposed replacing some particularly polluting consumables with greener alternatives. A simple but effective idea that the company truly owes to this collective mobilization.

Pierre Léonard: [00:03:35] The second step is active involvement. Here again, collective intelligence is your best ally to turn awareness into actions. Practically, this can take many forms, such as “Green Teams” found in many organizations—teams of volunteer employees working on sustainability projects within a company.

Pierre Léonard: [00:03:56] To take another Belgian example, I remember a museum in Liège which, during a major cleaning, decided to donate all its old catalogs to university libraries instead of pulping them, and took inventory of all leftover materials from old exhibitions it could recover.

Pierre Léonard: [00:04:13] Another way to actively involve your teams is to organize internal challenges between different departments or production sites with concrete goals like waste reduction or energy consumption.

Pierre Léonard: [00:04:24] Third approach: sustainable hackathons. So what is a hackathon? For 24 to 48 hours, you set your teams a challenge: imagine concrete solutions to an environmental or social problem related to your activity. You will be amazed by the creativity that emerges.

Pierre Léonard: [00:04:42] But there is a “but”. Awareness and involvement won’t be enough if your employees don’t have the skills to act. Training is thus the third essential pillar. This can be technical training, for example teaching your drivers eco-driving to reduce fuel consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Or eco-design for your R&D teams. There’s also more transversal training on responsible purchasing, waste management, biodiversity. Ideally, integrate these trainings into your skills development plan to show that they are not a “nice to have” but a full professional competency.

Pierre Léonard: [00:05:24] And again, it is very important to break down silos to enable cross-functional team work.

Pierre Léonard: [00:05:31] Finally, don’t forget the importance of communication. Regularly share the results of your initiatives, celebrate your successes, even modest ones, and highlight the contributors.

Pierre Léonard: [00:05:41] Transparency is also essential: make your indicators and results visible and accessible so everyone can measure the impact of their efforts. A simple, regularly updated dashboard displayed in common areas or on SharePoint can work wonders to maintain motivation. But attention, this is crucial: don’t just communicate, also ensure that you truly follow up on initiatives proposed by your employees and take them seriously. There is nothing more demotivating than seeing ideas left unaddressed. So implement a clear evaluation and implementation process with designated responsible persons and precise deadlines.

Pierre Léonard: [00:06:26] To sum up, involving your employees in your sustainable transition rests on four pillars: actively raising awareness, collective involvement, concrete training, and transparent communication, all with active follow-up. One last thing: remember this process must be inclusive. All your employees, whatever their level or role, have a part to play and ideas to bring. Ultimately, involving your colleagues in your sustainability strategy is not only a way to reach your environmental and social goals, it is also a powerful lever of engagement, innovation, cohesion, and even pride for your company. Thank you for joining me for these six minutes to understand how to involve your employees in your sustainability journey. I’ll see you in the next episode. Bye.

Michel: [00:07:17] I invite curious listeners to Google “The Week”: T.H.E. Week, by Frédéric Laloux. Because it’s also a great tool for teamwork in companies, following this program and generating great ideas to launch projects. Thanks, Pierre, see you soon.

Pierre Léonard: [00:07:32] See you soon.

Outro Jingle: [00:07:35] You are listening to “The Podcast Factory Org”!

Michel: [00:07:37] This podcast project is an initiative created and produced by the nonprofit “The Podcast Factory Org”, with sponsorship from “transforma bxl – Innovation Playground”. Since January 2025, and for five years, we have also been sponsored by “Plugin Company”, our preferred charging stations and charging card operator. “The Podcast Factory Org” is very proud to be a member of “KAYA – Coalition of Ecopreneurs” and to collaborate with the “Love Health Center”. You can find all episodes of all our podcasts on the “What’s Your Story dot be” website.

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