A climate challenge for the win
647 If employees were challenged to build more sustainable daily habits. They responded by choosing a vegetarian breakfast 3,814 times.
If employees are an important target group in our efforts towards achieving a more sustainable future. One of our goals is to increase awareness among the employees, and to do more for society on an individual level. To pursue this goal, we introduced a climate challenge at the beginning of 2021 for our employees working with small and medium-sized corporate clients and large claims.
Small deeds make a difference
The challenge was organised together with Deedster in their gamified climate action app. Employees formed more than 100 internal teams that competed against each other. To start with, all employees calculated their carbon footprint, and week by week they were able to unlock new steps on the virtual journey to gain new knowledge and advice.
The overall goal was to learn more about climate in general and, If’s sustainability work, and to complete climate-friendly deeds, or small actions, to reduce their own carbon footprint. The small deeds could be walking to work instead of driving, minimising food waste, saying no to buying new clothes, or saving energy by adjusting the temperature in their fridge.
Raising competence amongst employees
After the challenge, 75% of the employees said that they were likely to continue working on lowering their carbon footprint.
– The climate challenge was a great initiative for increasing awareness in a fun and engaging way. It supported us in finding new ways to think and gradually change our consumption habits, believes Line Gjengedal Ruud, who is Head of Large & International Claims.
She is convinced that If’s customers will benefit from the Deedster challenge, as the challenge raised a lot of interest amongst If employees, and also further increased internal competence and awareness, even after the challenge had ended.
– By building competence among our employees in new ways, we become better discussion partners for our customers when they come to us with sustainability matters – both in sales and claims handling, she explains.
And the winner?
A team named G-Squad from Norway was able to complete the most deeds per team member: 719 small actions for the climate in just four weeks (2,876 in total).
However, in this challenge we only have one true winner – the climate!
Four-week challenge:
- 647 participants in over 100 teams
- 50,388 quiz questions answered
- 93,481 deeds completed
- 109,274kg of CO2e saved, which corresponds to 545 return flights between Paris and London!
Employee voices
Ronald Hopperstad Olsen, Norway
– I think that saving electricity at home and not buying unnecessary things were the most popular deeds in my team.
I have tried a vegetarian lunch, paid attention to buying local food and listened to a sustainability podcast – and I also studied the ten principles of the UN Global Compact.
I showed the mobile application to my friends outside If, and they also thought that this is a great initiative.
Cecilia Sahlin, Sweden
– One of my best memories from the challenge is a team dinner that we had.
We chose to walk from the office to the restaurant while talking about sustainability, we all opted for a vegetarian menu and any leftovers were put in a doggy bag to minimise waste.