Episode 029 | October 17, 2022 | 30:54
Guest: —
Published: October 17, 2022
Duration: 30:54
Description
In this episode, Joachim and Frederik get tactical about creating a habitual learning facility inside organizations, which leads to sustainability literacy — a deeper understanding of the words, phrases, and terms commonly used in the sustainable healthcare community. We ask: how can we help our clients learn about sustainable healthcare practices?
Full transcript
About this transcript
This transcript was automatically generated and may contain inaccuracies, typos, or mistranslations. Episodes recorded before 2024 were transcribed by an on-site model and may have a higher error rate. The content reflects the original conversation to the best of our ability. For the authoritative version, please listen to the audio episode.
“Hey, we are just learning about this CO2 thing and now there is another thing called circular economy that I need to know about, and there is this biodiversity thing and the green transition.” The knowledge and tools needed for the green transition are like standing on an escalator coming towards you — if you stand still, you roll backwards. View your skill set and capacity building around sustainability as a process, not a fixed point.
Hello and welcome to the Sustainable Healthcare Podcast. Today we are talking about corporate learning and how to lower the bar for success in order to enable habitual learning. I am having a conversation with Joachim about how we can co-create an environment in a corporate for habitual learning on sustainability.
Most people who work with sustainability in the healthcare sector are not doing so full-time — only 5-15% of their job. Their normal work is being a doctor, procurement professional, clinical operations team member, whatever. Combined with a hectic work life. The whole healthcare industry is built around expertise — it can come down to life or death. It is such a vast field with thousands of different diseases. Even in a private company working on just one disease, some people are working in production, some in commercial, some in R&D and clinical. We have high ceilings and high bars for what it means to know something, combined with the scientific need for very small margin of error.
That gives the playing field for sustainability knowledge in healthcare: the conception that we have to know a lot to actually do something, very limited time and resources because we are usually not fully allocated, and a hectic work life. Even in a 50,000 person organization there used to be one CSR person who did the report. Now everybody needs to know at least something. There is a massive change to learn for people. Where do you start and what is important?
Think of sustainability much like finance. You need to know something about finance to have a corporate job — what the dollar is, the difference between cost and revenue. Even in HR, communication or production, you need some basic literacy to have a conversation. Just the basic literacy is what you would need. As we have had financial reporting coming, we are having sustainability reporting coming up as something regulated to a small degree already but will be more regulated later — meaning everyone will need to be conversational.
The good news is that most topics have driving key principles that give a thorough initial understanding of what is material and what is not. For biodiversity: loss of habitats is super important; plastic bags in a well-regulated waste system not so much. Three key focus areas to start with: the climate crisis (CO2), the circular economy, and biodiversity. All overlapping.
The goalpost is constantly moving. With the speed we acquire new knowledge, what was an ambitious way of addressing this problem yesterday is not ambitious tomorrow — it becomes standardized expectation. Focusing on it as a process is a better mindset for employees. The good thing: if you focus on key underlying drivers, there is core methodology that does not really change. Cooling and the cold chain around pharmaceuticals is never not going to be important. Burning fossil fuels is not going to turn sustainable. Some basic intuitive knowledge to lean on: burning fossil fuels is probably not a good idea, using animal calories to feed humans is probably not the best, cooling will always be expensive due to thermodynamics.
How should a learning organization orient itself when LCAs give different results for the same product question? Distinguish between raising knowledge across the organization vs how dedicated sustainability professionals solve a specific problem. Professionals will have the luxury of going to experts and making their best judgment knowing it might change later. Distinguish whether something is an awareness case or material — if you are removing some plastic cutlery for visibility, fine, just know it is an awareness case, it is not going to drive the change.
For mass mobilization of an organization: create the learnings and trainings around the people, not the other way around. Most corporates have online learning systems with lots of content that is never really used. When was the last time you logged into your corporate L&D platform? Combine it with a habit focus and lowering the bar.
Lower the bar: requirements to be an expert in healthcare are very high. Setting the bar at a PhD is unproductive because it is not attainable. To get a PhD you start by reading one page, then writing one page, then half a page. Unlock those small building blocks and integrate them into everyday lives. Most people won’t have the luxury of a year off for a master’s. Generic classes are too general — what is lacking in healthcare is “so what does that mean for me?” That is where we help by curating and designing more specific trainings.
The team should come back having learned something, but they should also relatively fast see how that provides value in their everyday work. Even if you walk away after five minutes you should have gotten some value to apply. Define problem statements on a micro scale — say you are a line engineer looking at utilities, you know CO2 from electricity is a larger emitter than water, so concentrate on energy first. A lightning-fast materiality assessment.
When we teach individuals about applying sustainability knowledge to their own work life and develop business cases, something falls into place mentally — “oh, we can do a sustainability case here without it being a sacrifice to the business, it is actually a value driver.” A eureka moment.
Concrete tools for habitual learning: make it easy to do. Lowering the bar is one way — reading one line feels more realistic than a whole book. Meet team members where they are in their everyday life. If they have to log in to a corporate platform that is not part of their workflow, they need a surplus of energy. If you hit them in their inbox, an existing meeting, a text on their phone, or a podcast app they already use, the barrier is much lower. Make it visible — Atomic Habits by James Clear: if you want to go running, put your running shoes in front of your door so you have to step over them.
Make it fun and rewarding. How we consume content as individuals is vastly different from how it is set up in corporate. It does not have to be TikTok videos, but it is interesting to see how big the difference is. Make it rewarding: actually making people better at their work is a big part. You can also hack it yourself — take a piece of chocolate every time you listen to a sustainability podcast.
Where to learn: ourselves, Ellen MacArthur Foundation, Google Scholar for academic rigor. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Joachim. Thank you for listening — please rate and give feedback on the podcast.