Your team and staff are the frontline in delivering the customer experience. Getting their buy-in is crucial to deliver on your promise.

If you engage them in the “why” behind your sustainability ambitions and actions, they can become passionate advocates for your business and be the authentic voice behind your storytelling.

Sustainability also creates meaning in their role, increasing engagement, retention and performance.

Get their Buy-In

Engagement starts with a shared understanding of the importance of sustainability to the business. Use this checklist to run a meeting or workshop.

• Articulate why sustainability matters from a business, financial and regulatory perspective.
• Explain how it aligns with the values and mission of your business - having a sustainability policy for your company helps. See section 2 for a template.
• Show how sustainability can contribute to the overall success of the business (for example, how it attracts higher-value customers or that it differentiates you from competitors, or how it preserves your assets for multi-generational use and monetisation).
• Ask your team members how working in a sustainable business helps their professional and personal growth.

Provide Training and Policies - Walk the Walk

If you haven’t already, you’ll need to adopt policies that align with your sustainability goals and then incorporate these into everyday business practices. They don’t need to be complex - they just need to align to your business and be embedded in everyday practices.

Provide training to ensure they understand these policies and are equipped to implement them effectively. You can even make this part of your initial buy- in workshop. Your team may not have engaged with sustainable management practices before, so laying a foundation and providing them a base level of understanding will support your aspirations.

Consider online learning tools to support your team, such as Typsy. Leadership plays a key role in promoting sustainability. Managers and executives should lead by example, following sustainability policies in their actions and decision-making. An authentic commitment to sustainability inspires employees to follow suit.

Opportunities for Storytelling

• Launch your sustainability storytelling through your workshop
• Tell your network through Linkedin or email about your workshop, what was said and why
• Take photos or video of your team participating in the workshop, or sharing why sustainability is important in their role for owned and social channels such as LinkedIn, Instagram and eDMs

Invite a guest speaker from your Destination Management Organisation (DMO) at state, regional or local level to talk about how sustainable tourism fits into the wider narrative of the region and how they can help promote your business.

1. Audiences
2. Ambitions
3. Actions
4. Amplify