How behavioural science enabled our clients to save the equivalent of London’s daily CO2 emissions

To mark Earth Day this year, we’re explaining how our behaviour change service helped businesses in hard-to-abate sectors reduce their environmental impact by the equivalent of London’s average daily emissions in 2023.

By focusing on the ‘human factor’ – i.e. employee behaviour and decision-making – Signol helps customers, including leading airlines and shipping companies, to make significant progress towards net zero goals almost immediately.

Behavioural scientist Divya Sukumar, who leads Signol’s research, UX and data science team, says: “Many businesses recognise the urgency to decarbonise, but struggle to take concrete action which will achieve emissions reductions quickly. 

“Particularly in hard-to-abate sectors like aviation and shipping, companies are exploring and investing in innovative sustainability solutions like alternative fuels and carbon capture, but overlooking the power of their people, who can really move the dial on decarbonisation strategies.

“Whether your workforce are making decisions about engine usage – like pilots and captains on ships and airlines do – or organising an international conference and booking corporate travel, behaviour change techniques are a science-backed but light-touch way to increase sustainable workplace activity.”

Signol uses a sophisticated set of behaviour change techniques, delivered to clients’ employees through digital channels. The approach is based on a deep understanding of human psychology and contextual decision-making and designed to address the reasons why employees don’t choose to behave in more environmentally friendly ways even when they have the opportunity to do so.

These techniques are effective in particular contexts, so it’s important for businesses looking to engage employees with behaviour change to understand the experiences of their own employees and select behaviour change techniques accordingly.

Here are five examples of how we use behavioural science to address decarbonisation challenges in hard-to-abate industries.

1. Reward sustainable behaviour with charity donations

Even if employees care about their own environmental impact and the sustainability credentials of the business they work for, this doesn’t mean that decarbonisation goals themselves will provide enough of an incentive for employees to change their own behaviour at work.

Ultimately, individuals are employed to do a specific job and already balance a number of different pressures and priorities to perform their job function. This means that more abstract priorities like ‘playing my part in company-wide sustainability initiatives’ will lower the list of considerations when it comes to practical, everyday work-related decisions. 

However, additional incentives and rewards linked to sustainability goals can effectively keep sustainability front-of-mind and encourage different behaviours. For example, a company can commit to making charity donations for every sustainability goal reached (individual, team, or company-wide).

This is even more effective when the specific charity cause is something employees already care about or interact with.

For example, the shipping company Stolt Tankers planted three mangrove trees in a forest in the Philippines for every goal achieved in its project with Signol. Many of the crew members on board its ships are from the Philippines and were particularly enthusiastic about protecting the local ecosystem.

2. Reframe environmental impact in relatable ways

Employees should understand the real-world impact of their workplace decisions in concrete, relatable terms. We’ve seen that this can create and maintain a high level of engagement with ongoing sustainability initiatives. 

‘The company has saved 8,000 tonnes of CO2’ doesn’t feel particularly meaningful or relevant for an individual employee since this says nothing about their own achievement, and the overall savings figure is hard to understand in practical terms.

Instead, companies can provide personalised insights on sustainability achievements, framed in such a way that it immediately feels tangible in either a work or personal context. For example, pilots engaged in Signol’s project with Virgin Atlantic Airlines were shown the emissions savings they were personally responsible for, represented as equivalent to emissions from a specific flight route. If there is no relevant industry equivalency, personal impact can be framed in terms of emissions produced by a certain number of households or cars on the road, for example. 

3. Proactively engage employees without burdening them

Unless a specific decision is already routine, people are more likely to make that decision if they are reminded to do so. The problem is that employees can quickly become overwhelmed with constant notifications or resent heavy-handed management.

In many hard-to-abate industries employees make operational decisions about energy supplies, for example, and are responding to a situation as it evolves. In these contexts it’s often not appropriate or possible to send notifications, but managers can nonetheless reinforce specific behaviours by engaging the workforce proactively on an ongoing basis.

The best way to do this is to use communication channels and processes employees already engage with, rather than add new steps to their existing workflows or extra tasks like joining another team meeting. For example, Signol sends personalised emails to pilots and captains, using research-based content design to make it easy and accessible for users to engage with important information and reminders.

4. Set realistic, personalised goals tied to specific decisions

Company net zero targets – while important – won’t directly inform employees exactly how they can and should play their part. Conversely, setting specific goals for teams or individuals to reduce their environmental impact at work can disenfranchise employees if it’s not clear how to achieve these goals or whether they are achievable at all.

Goal-setting theory, backed by psychology research, emphasises the importance of setting goals with the right amount of difficulty, tied to specific tasks or decisions. We have seen that personalising goals based on an employee’s previous behaviour patterns creates ambitious but realistic and achievable goals and encourages employees to at least maintain the highest level of performance they have already demonstrated is possible. 

Setting goals in this way harnesses employees’ motivation to at least beat their own personal best, and ensures that employees make the most of their individual opportunities to be more sustainable, without ignoring relevant context and practical limitations.

5. Harness the power of social norms

We’re social creatures and tend to conform to the norm, whatever our environment. With the right approach, businesses can leverage this effect to encourage more sustainable behaviour across the board.

As long as a desired sustainable decision is relevant to multiple employees, companies can identify what the baseline or general performance level is – for example how frequently people over-order and waste food at company events, or the extent to which pilots optimise engine usage while taxing.

Public comparisons through employee rankings are rarely motivating for the majority of employees, but without publicly comparing individuals, companies can communicate directly to an employee when they don’t do a specific behaviour that most of their peers do in the same conditions.

This ‘social proof’ technique can motivate employees by highlighting that it’s possible for them to improve, but without creating a competitive culture or using heavy-handed performance management.

You can learn more about how Signol uses behavioural science to support business decarbonisation here or get in touch with our behavioural science team to explore how these techniques could work in your industry.