Healthy Planet. Healthy People.
Forty-eight years about this week, the first Earth Day was celebrated. The intention was to create consciousness for the environment, to put topics such as air pollution and gas guzzling cars on the front page, and to move people to action to protect the environment.
While we have made a lot of progress in those 48 years, the environment needs all the help we can provide. Efforts put forth not only benefit the environment, but they impact every human being on the planet. At a very basic level, climate change impacts the social and environmental determinants of health – clean air, safe drinking water, sufficient food, and secure shelter.
According to the World Health Organizations, climate change is the single biggest health threat facing humanity. Research is showing that the challenges we are experiencing from climate change will seriously disrupt business-as-usual.
We need to link employee well-being, and the actions employers are taking to do their part on climate change.
Integrate CSR and ESG with employee well-being. Many organizations have established initiatives for Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental, Social and Governance. Bringing employee well-being practitioners into the conversation recognizes the impact that employee well-being programs have on a key stakeholder group, and links it to the goals of supporting the resilience of all stakeholders.
Encourage employee involvement. By creating awareness and offering opportunities for employees to act on climate change, it brings the issue into their lives. This might include creating an employee environment ERG or sustainability committee, creating volunteer activities in the community, and creating communications on the impact our individual actions.
Communicate the link between a healthy plant and healthy people. Not everyone may fully understand the impact between climate change and our health and well-being. Organizations can start by educating employees on this impact and help them see why it is a concern for all of us.
We know that investing in employee well-being is good for business. We can only have healthy people when we have a healthy planet. And we can only have healthy businesses when we have healthy people.
