The importance of involving the entire team in the organization’s responsible digital approach

As Corporate Digital Responsibility is gradually becoming a real pillar of CSR, many organizations want to launch a Responsible Digital approach (Plateforme RSE). According to the Green IT Benchmark 2021 report, greenhouse gas emissions associated with digital technology in the workplace already represent 27% of the sustainable GHG budget of a French citizen. (GreenIT.fr) And while digital-related GHG emissions are increasing by 6% per year (The Shift Project), companies are struggling to reduce their digital footprint.

Many best practices can therefore be implemented to ensure a comprehensive and coherent approach, but where should you start, and who should you involve?

Together with Zei, we wanted to take a step back and focus on the primary importance of bringing all employees on board in order to ensure a coherent and complete Responsible Digital approach. Indeed, as the Information System (IS) is now at the heart of how organizations operate, and as every member of an organization uses digital tools as part of their work, a company cannot lead a genuine Responsible Digital approach without encouraging all employees to adopt responsible digital behavior. (SPN)

Petit rappel sur le numérique et son empreinte

A quick reminder about digital technology and its footprint

As a reminder, digital technology is far from immaterial. It has significant environmental impacts, mainly linked to the manufacturing of equipment:

According to the Digital Technology in Europe report, impacts mainly come from user equipment rather than data centers: 71% of environmental impacts come from devices.

And it is not the use of the device that has the greatest impact, but the manufacturing of a new one. Most of the impacts occur during the manufacturing phase, 54%, before the equipment is even used, 44%.

Contrary to many common misconceptions, the main cause of the digital footprint is therefore linked to the overproduction of equipment, driven by overconsumption, and to its very short lifespan. (Frédéric Bordage)

This means that users and IT departments are responsible for the majority of impacts within organizations. (GreenIT.fr)

This trend is all the more worrying because the number of new professional devices placed on the market each year is growing. In France, 371 million devices were placed on the market in 2019, representing a 50% increase compared with 2018, according to ADEME.

When we also consider that the average lifespan of a computer is now 4 years, compared with 11 years in 1985 (INR), it becomes clear that the growth of our information systems is unsustainable.

This is why it is so important for every organization to launch a structured Responsible Digital approach.

Responsible Digital Manager: one of the most sought-after roles among French companies in 2022

According to a study conducted by Birdeo, a recruitment firm specializing in Sustainability and Impact, this is precisely “THE major challenge of the coming months, increasingly highlighted by stakeholders in the sector: the urgent need to integrate environmental considerations into technological innovation.”

As a result, the Responsible Digital Manager is among the Top 5 most sought-after roles by French companies in 2022. (Birdeo)

The objective of this role is to steer the organization’s approach to making its information system and digital practices more responsible as a whole, from impact measurement through to the implementation of a more virtuous digital strategy.

A detailed understanding of the footprint of the entire digital ecosystem, of the three tiers that make it up, and of their entire life cycle, is therefore necessary in order to make the best choices regarding IT equipment and the broader technology management strategy built around it.

To successfully lead this approach, an educational mindset is essential in order to raise awareness, educate and engage all employees.

The Responsible Digital Manager therefore exists in particular to bridge the gap between IT and CSR, breaking down silos between technical knowledge and expertise on one side, and a broader, more general understanding of environmental issues on the other.

Indeed, “to spread throughout the entire organization, a responsible digital strategy must be sponsored at the highest level. It must also be embodied by a consensual figure who speaks both IT and CSR fluently.” (ITforBusiness)

To bring the digital and environmental transitions together, the Responsible Digital Manager works cross-functionally and has the ability to act across the entire organization.

Structuring a complete and coherent Responsible Digital approach is therefore a role and a mission in its own right.

Impact optimization: prioritizing the actions to implement

That being said, many companies, especially those without a Responsible Digital Manager, do not know where to start or how to identify the main causes of their digital impact.

This is why it is important to prioritize the different actions to implement based on their potential impact and ease of implementation.

Indeed, as Bordage points out, many figures and pieces of information circulate about digital pollution, starting with those related to usage, which are often overemphasized.

“The media and influencers also push us to sort through our emails, empty our inboxes and use so-called ‘eco-friendly’ search engines. Objectively, since the vast majority of the environmental impacts of digital technology come from manufacturing, deleting emails or changing search engines will not change much. The only two truly effective approaches are reducing the number of devices we use and extending their lifespan.” (Maddyness)

In order to avoid making users feel guilty and contributing to greenwashing, it is essential to put things back into context and keep orders of magnitude in mind.

This is why educating employees on this topic is so important.

Including employee education in your Responsible Digital action plan is therefore crucial for an approach that is supported by the entire organization.

This is why “raising employee awareness of environmental protection” appears on rzilient’s dashboard on the Zei platform.

The objective of this indicator? To provide employees with the keys to understanding and taking action to reduce their environmental impact in the context of their role, because the approach must be carried collectively.

Organizational and individual levels: combining the right levers

To avoid falling into the triangle of inaction and placing the weight of responsibility on “the other,” it is essential to remember that everyone has a role to play within an organization when it comes to reducing its digital footprint.

A complete approach combines a strategy driven at the highest level by management with responsible digital behavior from each employee.

Individual actions are both important and relevant alongside collective actions.

Thomas Wagner, in particular, highlights the combination of these two levers:

“Not only are individual actions inseparable from collective actions, they can even lead to them. We have seen that politicians rarely, if ever, take initiatives on their own and simply engage in political recovery. This is what we call the social tipping point. Structural change happens because individuals see an interest in it or have clearly expressed it. Seeing that interest, politicians follow. Of course, this tipping point is heterogeneous. Sometimes it takes 10% of the population, sometimes only a few individuals.” (Bon Pote)

The same applies within an organization: if there is a strong interest clearly expressed by employees, management has no choice but to follow.

To bring everyone on board and drive a genuine Responsible Digital approach, it is therefore essential to raise awareness and educate people on the importance of the approach beforehand. Otherwise, no one will take action, even if an action plan has already been defined.

Bringing all employees on board

Now that we have set out the thinking behind the “why,” let’s move on to the “how.”

Here is an example action plan, based on several best practices outlined by the Interministerial Mission for Eco-responsible Digital Technology, Minum_eco:

Governance and strategy

• Appoint a Responsible Digital lead to steer the approach,
• Appoint a network of ambassadors to embed the approach over time and within each team and department,
• Formalize a charter or manifesto to officially establish the approach.

Awareness and training

• Deploy an awareness plan to help teams become familiar with Responsible Digital practices,
• Deploy a training plan to support the development of Responsible Digital knowledge and skills.

Integrating awareness and training into the employee experience from onboarding onwards, and on an ongoing basis, helps create a company culture that supports continuous improvement.

Including the Responsible Digital MOOC developed by INR in the onboarding of every new employee is therefore a good first step. (INR)

At rzilient, we have notably decided to offer the Responsible Digital knowledge certification to every member of the team.

Regularly offering awareness and/or team-building workshops, such as the Digital Collage, or registering the company on engagement platforms such as Vendredi, helps anchor the approach over time, particularly through the challenges they offer.

To make learning more playful, offering an escape game such as the one developed by Escape Game en Ligne on the topic of Responsible Digital practices is a simple and engaging way to raise employee awareness.

Events such as Cyber World CleanUp Day also provide an opportunity to create annual reminders and dedicate a full day to raising awareness of the digital footprint through action.

To go further, integrating Responsible Digital knowledge into a training plan is essential in order to support the development of employees’ Responsible Digital skills.

This is why we work to offer one training session per year to each team, particularly through the catalogs of Agence Lucie or Point de M.I.R.

At the same time, developing internal content such as booklets, guides or best-practice checklists helps employees take ownership of key figures, important information and the right actions to implement.

In this regard, Zei creates a fun poster every month on a CSR or impact-related topic to raise awareness among its teams about eco-friendly workplace habits and accelerate awareness. You can download their free poster on good digital habits here.

Finally, promoting impact measurement tools internally, such as the professional environmental impact calculator developed by INR x Decathlon, or Nos Gestes Climat by Datagir, makes it possible to monitor one’s impact over time and measure progress.

Conclusion

To launch a Responsible Digital approach that is both complete and coherent, it is important to combine a top-down approach, meaning leadership from management, with a bottom-up approach, through the direct demand and involvement of each employee.

This requires a strategy and governance model designed accordingly, based on a defined action plan, supported by leadership and involving all internal teams.

First of all, raising awareness and educating all employees on the sources of digital pollution and their individual footprint is essential to help them understand the importance of the approach and create momentum and motivation internally.

Then, integrating continuous learning into the employee experience helps create a company culture that supports ongoing improvement.

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