While sustainability may strike some as being beyond the people function, consider this: 82% of global workers want to help their organizations become more sustainable, and three in five want to incorporate sustainability into their current role, a Salesforce survey found. As such, some HR leaders say that sustainability efforts have become inextricably linked to their job.

HR’s role. HR leaders can play a vital role in preparing employees for positions with a sustainability slant by understanding “the critical role that corporate values and culture and employee engagement play in driving business value,” Sunya Norman, VP of ESG strategy and engagement at Salesforce, explained.

At Salesforce, Norman has done this through co-founding Earthforce, a sustainability-focused employee resource group with over 7,000 members, and developing and deploying the company’s library of sustainability learning courses. Called Trailhead, it houses coursework on various sustainability skills, including sustainable product design and how to live a more eco-friendly lifestyle.

“HR has been a key partner in integrating sustainability in the entire employee lifecycle,” she said. “We have sustainability information in our onboarding…We have now brought in sustainability as a part of our executive compensation and that was a partnership with HR and the compensation team.”

While most businesses do not have as many resources or employees as Salesforce, Norman insisted that HR can still prioritize sustainability by making it a core value and taking steps toward figuring out how their organization can make moves.

She also recommended that HR leaders weave sustainability into every role. For example, she said, a CFO could be “thinking about sustainable finance and different tools like sustainability bonds, or investing in different types of funds that are more oriented towards renewable energy.”

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