Creating a culture of sustainability: a Q&A with UCEM Project Manager Emma Kearsey

Posted on: 30 April, 2024

Emma Kearsey, Project Manager at UCEM, gave us an overview of a new initiative at UCEM – the Sustainability Champions.

UCEM have launched Sustainability Champions – an internal initiative encouraging its staff to get involved with sustainability initiatives and activities within the institution. As part of Globe – UCEM’s ambition to create a more sustainable built environment – the goal of this initiative is to help foster a culture of sustainability within the institution.

To find out more about the inception of Sustainability Champions and what a culture of sustainability actually looks like, we sat down with Emma Kearsey, Project Manager at UCEM.

This interview was conducted by Daniel Ashton, Content Marketing Manager at UCEM.

About Emma

Emma joined UCEM in 2016 as Senior Academic Administrator before moving into project work in 2018. As Project Manager, Emma is the lead on various projects within UCEM, from our Sustainability Strategy to Access and Participation Plan (APP), Widening Participation (WP) and Net Zero.

Q: What was the inspiration behind the launch of Sustainability Champions?

A: With Globe, we’ve got a long-term vision around how we embed sustainability as a strategic driver for UCEM and place it at the heart of our culture, decision making and management.

We did a lot of benchmarking with other institutions and other organisations to see what they’ve done to create a culture of sustainability. What came up time and time again and we subsequently identified as a best practice was having staff champions, with the logic behind it being that to try and achieve these big, long-term aspirations, one person isn’t going to be able to do it alone – you can’t have one person sitting at the top, telling everyone how things are going to be run. If you want to create a culture of sustainability, you need to empower your staff to feel like they’re allowed to make changes.

Q: You recently ran a ‘clothes refresh’ event at UCEM’s Horizons office. How did this come about, and what other events do you have planned?

A: We ran a staff survey back in autumn of last year, and one of the interesting things that came up was confusion around what was meant by sustainability and what it was UCEM actually does in sustainability.

What we’ve decided to trial this year and test with the Sustainability Champions is to choose one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the United Nations as our central theme, which all of our activities would link to. So, rather than talking about all the different types of sustainability, this year we’re focusing on climate action.

Everything we’re doing this year is related to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, carbon emissions, and how we can mitigate the climate crisis. For instance, clothes refresh event are obviously linked to the fact that the fashion industry is one of the biggest contributors in terms of GHG emissions. In fact, National Geographic research found that 8% of all GHG emissions relate to the fashion industry, so some of the shopping choices you make in your day-to-day life have more of a knock-on impact than you might realise.

Fashion is also one of the industries that is most at risk of climate change. The industry is reliant on seven of the ten countries most at risk of things like extreme weather events. In a way, it’s a classic cycle – fashion is generating all of this pollution, and that’s impacting the countries where most of the fashion products are actually coming from.

While we’re focusing on climate action this year at UCEM, we run a different theme every month that links to it, and fashion is just one element we explored in March. For instance, in November we looked at paper, in December it was external communications, and in January, it was volunteering.

(Emma shared the results of these monthly activities, which you can find below):

Q: How do the sustainability champions tie into Globe?

A: One of the sub-aspirations of our long-term vision for embedding sustainability into our culture is to support and encourage staff to embrace a shift to a more sustainable lifestyle beyond the scope of their work environment. We’re looking at how we can encourage staff to act more sustainably, not just at work, but also in their personal lives. This fits into the ‘Who We Influence’ strand of Globe.

Learn more: Globe – UCEM’s ambition to create a more sustainable built environment

Q: How can the sustainability champions help build a culture of sustainability at UCEM?

A: The main idea with the Sustainability Champions was to empower staff to make changes in their personal and professional lives and lead by example. We found in our staff survey that people felt they didn’t know enough about sustainability and climate change to make a difference. In the end, it’s no good just telling someone to do something – you have to demonstrate that you’re willing to do it yourself.

We also want staff to have a say in UCEM’s future and where we’re going. This is going to be an 8-year programme and a big part of our next strategic plan, which will run from 2025 to 2030. Sustainability will be a core tenet of this plan, so we need to make sure staff are involved in the future and the direction we’re heading in.

Q: Will establishing a culture of sustainability at UCEM have an impact on our students as well?

A: Yes, it will definitely have an impact on our students. When we’re talking about sustainability, it’s very broad because it can cover everything from climate change to equality, diversity and inclusion, so how we’re dealing with students, how we’re supporting them, is really important as well.

It also comes into things like our delivery model – making sure it’s flexible and works for our students. That’s something my colleague Charlotte Thackeray is working on as part of the Widening Participation Strategy.

Learn more: How higher education can encourage and support more women into the built environment

With the Sustainability Champions and our internal culture, if every member of staff is really knowledgeable and passionate about sustainability, it will come across in how we talk to, engage with and teach our students, which will of course have a ripple effect.

What we’re hoping for then is that they go on and out into the built environment and have a much, much bigger effect.

Q: What are the main goals of this sustainability initiative?

A: Most of our goals come out of the results of our staff survey back in the autumn. One of the main things we want to do is start measuring the culture of sustainability, improving how we evidence it, and showing that we’re having an impact and that this culture is growing.

We set a baseline with the staff survey in terms of what the existing culture of sustainability is at UCEM, which was really interesting.

We had 60% of staff who thought UCEM was already doing enough around sustainability, which is great, but this meant 40% felt there was more we could be doing or weren’t aware of it. 69% considered sustainability to be their responsibility at work, and a further 50% are extremely worried about climate change and the environment. From a wellbeing perspective, we’ve got a duty of care – we want to be doing enough that our staff can feel comfortable that we’re taking action.

The survey helped us identify a couple of barriers which prevent staff engaging with sustainability at work, which is something we’re trying to address with the Sustainability Champions and this culture of sustainability we’re looking to create. Everybody was interested in doing something, but all of the staff feedback was that people didn’t know what we wanted them to do.

Q: How will you measure your success?

A: Some measurements are nice and easy to track. For instance, in November, when we covered the theme of paper usage, we were encouraging everybody to use less paper in the office and we got a physical indication that worked. We saw a 14.7% drop in printing jobs, which may not sound huge but translates to around 1,600 less print jobs than for November of the previous year. Given that’s in the run-up to graduation, where we’re printing out certificates and brochures, that’s actually quite a significant drop.

In the long-term, we’re going to see if any improvements we’re able to implement persist over the year or not, whilst aiming to improve things, like doubling our volunteering efforts. We only had 12 members of staff volunteer in the last financial year, so that’s around 84 hours since we launched the scheme in January. This year, we’ve already had 38 members of staff book their volunteering, so that’s up to 266 hours so far – a 316% increase compared to last year, and we have until the end of December to get more people involved.

Outside of the numbers, there’s the stories from our teams. We’re still quite early on but we’re already starting to see some great effects, where teams are doing things that we haven’t even asked them to do as part of our culture. I hear about it all the time from various people and it’s fantastic – just what we wanted.

The Sustainability Champions will be exploring the below themes over the following months:

• April: Climate & Social Action Week
• May: Green Energy
• June: Horizons Net Zero Training