The Role of HR in Driving Sustainability
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In today’s episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we welcome Luke Wynne, Head of Sustainability Learning at JLL, a global real estate and property company.
Luke shares insights on the critical role sustainability plays in the built environment and how JLL is leading the charge in reducing global carbon emissions by upskilling employees and implementing innovative strategies.
🎓 In this episode, Luke discusses:
The role of HR in fostering a culture of sustainability.
The built environment’s significant contribution to global carbon emissions.
How JLL is leveraging learning and development to drive behavior change around sustainability.
Aligning corporate sustainability goals with employee values is key to attracting and retaining top talent.
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Luke Wynne 0:00
One in 318, to 24 year olds in the UK reported turning down an actual job offer because the company offering the jobs ESG sustainability credentials didn't match their own expectations. There's some great research by Paul Polman, the former Unilever CEO, and he found that in the US and the UK, across all kind of workforce generations, one in three people had reported leaving a job because the values of the company didn't match their own values. And when he looked more closely at Gen Z and millennials, found that that went up to almost 50% and when you consider that by 2025 next year, 75% of the global workforce will be millennials, this is a trend that's only going to really ramp up. More and more people want to work with a career that gives them purpose. More and more people want to work for a company that they feel is doing the right thing by society and right thing by the environment they feel proud of working for. So from a from an HR point of view, and attracting and retaining that best talent, then being able to present and talk about genuinely ambitious and real sustainability credentials is really important.
Chris Rainey 1:16
Lou, welcome to the show. How
Luke Wynne 1:16
are you really good? Thanks for having me. Chris,
Chris Rainey 1:19
meet face to face. Finally, yeah, we do. We did the virtual one before, right? Was it pandemic, or was it out of pandemic? No, it's
Luke Wynne 1:25
out of pandemic. My
Chris Rainey 1:26
brain still has a blur of that whole time.
Luke Wynne 1:29
Yeah, it was maybe 2022,
Chris Rainey 1:30
yeah, yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah, nice to you, yeah, Likewise, likewise.
Luke Wynne 1:34
Good to be here in the studio. Yeah, you're
Chris Rainey 1:36
like, I think your second guest here as well. So if it feels so big for two people when I built it, I think maybe just I went the spec went a bit wide. Yeah, well, on that, but we have to fill it up with some more people in the future. Indeed, get some of your team involved before we jump into people. People that didn't tune into the event. Tell them a little bit about yourself personally and your role, which is pretty unique. Yeah, don't come across that often in our world, sure, and a little bit about your the role in the organization as well, sure, sure.
Luke Wynne 2:05
So I'm head of sustainability learning for JLL Jones, Lang LaSalle. We're a global real estate and property company. We've got over 100,000 employees across 80 countries, and in my role, really, my remit is to upskill all of those employees on sustainability, sustainability, Net Zero, carbon, ESG, are all really, really important aspects of what JLL does. The industry that we're in, the built environment, is responsible for an absolutely whopping 40% of global carbon emissions. So in terms of getting to net zero, addressing this little issue we've got called Climate Change, buildings are a huge part of that. And so being 40% 40% 39% to be precise,
Chris Rainey 2:53
I think the most people know
Luke Wynne 2:54
that. I don't think most people do.
Chris Rainey 2:56
If you ask, I'm sure if you ask any what, any kind of people are not in the space, like, Where does most of the emissions come from? They wouldn't say buildings.
Luke Wynne 3:02
They'll say things like aviation, agriculture, for example, aviation, the global aviation, entire industry is responsible for about 2% of global carbon emissions. We have 40% one element of our entire industry, data centers. And data center growth is huge because of AI energy loading, yep, technology, internet is also responsible for 2% of global carbon emission. So data centers alone emit the same amount of carbon emissions as the entire global aviation industry, and with the growth of data centers, it's only going to increase. So there's a huge responsibility on the shoulders of anyone working in property, real estate buildings, to think about, how do we address this? So, you know, this is a long answer to your question, but, but my role is, is really to focus on the upskilling of everyone at JLL, so that beyond just the remit of the sustainability team, everyone can see their role through the lens of sustainability and understand how they can really contribute to getting us to net zero carbon by 2040 which is jll's target. The global target is 2050 but also working with our clients
Chris Rainey 4:10
as well, you're helping your clients do that whilst doing it yourselves. Basically,
Luke Wynne 4:14
yes, absolutely. So we have about 1000 people around the world delivering sustainability Net Zero services for our clients who have set similar net zero goals to ourselves, and they need to collaborate and to work with us to have any chance of achieving those. And from a learning and kind of HR point of view, what we're also seeing, which is really exciting, is that a lot of our clients, when they understand that we have this internal function to upskill our employees, they're really interested in that, because they have the same challenges around engaging their workforce too. So I'm now doing a kind of double hatted role internal L and D and upskilling, which is fantastic, but also really servicing our clients in this space as well, which is even more exciting. That's so interesting,
Chris Rainey 4:57
because I don't think I can name another person with your. Role, Yeah,
Luke Wynne 5:00
unfortunately, there's not many of us out there, unfortunately, so I'm quite lucky. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 5:04
this is a role that they create specifically from scratch for you. So
Luke Wynne 5:08
yeah, I joined a couple of years ago, and the team was built with with real investment by both HR and also our sustainability business line at JLL, in recognition that if we set these ambitious targets, and we've got all these strategies in place to get there, to reduce our carbon emissions, energy consumption, et cetera. But fundamental to that is bringing our workforce along on the journey as well. And so we do that in many ways, but one of the critical ways is through learning and development and upskilling. So a wider team was formed a bit over a couple of years ago, which is when I joined. I joined as a facilitator. That's a real passion of mine, is the engagement and delivery, and have since moved into the role of leading the function globally. So yeah, it's great, huge and complex challenges associated with it, but opportunity for impact and real kind of mindset and behavior change is massive as well. One of the things
Chris Rainey 6:01
I wanted to ask you, wanted to ask you is, could you break down all of the things that included when we talk about the word sustainability, yeah, achieve, I think a lot of people get a bit confused. A lot of acronyms,
Luke Wynne 6:12
loads of acronyms. Yeah, you've probably heard of sustainability, ESG, Net Zero, D and I so fundamentally to really simplify sustainability. It's just really about taking a long term view, thinking about how our actions today can allow us to prosper today, but also don't inhibit or damage the future prospects of generations to come. And we also think about our key stakeholders. So going beyond just creating value for shareholders, but thinking about who are our all of our stakeholders, so the local community, our employees, the environment, nature, biodiversity being a part of that as well. So you know, broadening our definition of success beyond just the bottom line and measuring profit and financial measures of success, but thinking about, how are we impacting positively across all aspects of society and the environment as well, so sustainability as a whole is that ESG stands for environment. Social governance is really a way of measuring that and structuring that to understand where are the areas that we need to address set targets for progressive measure and report on under environment social and then making sure on the governance piece we've got structures in place in order to do that really well. Yeah.
Chris Rainey 7:32
I think another thing I'd love to ask you, even friends of mine, asked me, Is, so you know that what's got, what's D and I got to do sustainability? Yeah?
Luke Wynne 7:39
Yeah. I mean D and D and I've obviously had a huge growth in the last few years, which is, which is fantastic for all of the obvious reasons, and in many ways, does see a little bit separately to sustainability within an organizational structure, often because it is such an urgent and important priority. But sustainability really is the overarching umbrella to all of that, because I think historically, we think about sustainability as purely environmental, and clearly we've got quite a significant climate crisis, nature and biodiversity crisis that we we need to address, but it's so intertwined and interconnected with a lot of the social and human issues that we face as well. So sustainability brings all of that together to recognize that, you know, we can't just address any one of these issues in a silo without recognizing how it cuts across, you know, society, environment and other areas as well. You
Chris Rainey 8:29
can't ignore that. So what is the role of HR? Yeah, good
Luke Wynne 8:33
question. I think the role of HR in sustainability is huge. I think, you know, we have to decarbonize the society. We have to decarbonize the built environment industry that I'm in, and we can have lots of strategies to address energy consumption, waste, all those other elements. But in order to really succeed in the ambitious targets that are being set, the effort needs to start at home, and we really need to be doing business in different ways. We need to find new ways of working, innovative, more collaborative ways of working, and that starts with the workforce. How do we help people, like I said before, begin to see the role that they do through the lens of sustainability? And that's not just giving them a great, you know, learning program, it's thinking about, what's the mindset shift here that we need to help to generate? What's the cultural shift we need to help to create? We can't just tell people to have to do it. We need to get them to lean into it and be a part of that positive change. So from an HR perspective, that's everything from your kind of for large organizations like JLL, your global learning and development strategy, how are you embedding that cultural shift, that mindset shift and sustainability, into the content that you're doing, the messages you're putting out there, into recruitment? How are you thinking about the types of people that you are recruiting into your organization, whether or not they're sustainability leaders, what attributes and wider views and. Approaches do they bring to allow to really begin working down these new pathways of more collaborative, innovative ways of working and the collaboration, I think piece is really important for a large company like JLo and many others that's internally, getting business lines and teams that have maybe worked in silos before to share data, to share projects, to be more collaborative, but also, you know, externally, with suppliers, customers, competitors, you know, I think we really do need to shake up the way that we work and really challenge some of the status quo. And I think that starts at home in the organization, and HR has a huge role to play in
Chris Rainey 10:39
that. Yeah, I think when we talk about the topic, one of the feedbacks I get is people like, what does that look like in a practical sense, though? What are some of the specifics we don't mention? Obviously. LD, what are some of the you know, trainings that you're providing to actually will make a meaningful difference?
Luke Wynne 10:56
Yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, next week at JLL is our second annual JLL Career Week, and this year we are focused firmly on two of the biggest forces impacting the workforce with our career work, and the theme of, is it the future of work? Is the theme? So we're looking at how sustainability and Gen generative AI are impacting the workforce. And so we've got a full week of events, virtual and face to face across our global company, bringing together some of our most senior leaders, members of the global executive board, and other leaders throughout the business, to really delve into this topic and bring the whole global workforce on board. Lots of people are nervous about sustainability. Lots of people are nervous about AI and the impact that
Chris Rainey 11:43
can have on the work. When a lot of times we talk about this topic, people feel threatened. Yes, definitely. Why is that?
Luke Wynne 11:49
Well, I think I mean, and the case is for both of those areas, but to focus on sustainability, you know, it's been around for a while now, and, you know, in recent years, it's really gathered momentum, which is fantastic, but if you're not a sustainability professional, chances are you have felt increasingly that, gee, I need to know about this sustainability stuff. ESG, net zero. I hear it all the time. I don't quite know what it means. I feel like I should know it, so I don't want to ask. And so I'm going to ignore it, and I'm not going to talk about it, and I'm going to, you know, lean away from it. And you know, part of my role and the role of HR and learning is to demystify that a little bit, to help people feel more comfortable. They don't have to be experts, they don't have to know all the answers, but to feel more comfortable being able to have a conversation. You know, if you're in a client, facing role in an industry like ours, just being able to broach the conversation. Know what questions you can ask at a certain level to engage in that conversation with the client. You know, one of the things we often say to our non sustainability staff is have that confidence and just look to understand what is your client committed to when it comes to net zero carbon, ask them some questions. Understand, what are their challenges? What are their pain points? You don't have to have the answers on the spot, but if you engage in that conversation earlier, it develops over time. Who knows where that will lead? And you know, if you're not, if you're not kind of bought in by the social and moral imperative, the business case, the commercial case for sustainability, you can't ignore it, you know. So
Chris Rainey 13:17
is that what? We don't know what? What is the business case for it? Well,
Luke Wynne 13:22
I think there's so multifaceted the business case, whether it be driven by increasing legislation and regulation requiring companies to act in a certain more kind of socially or environmentally responsible way if they don't adhere to them, is going to be huge reputational damage. It's going to be fine. We've got you know, the Volkswagen Dieselgate example from a few years ago is a perfect example of the reputational damage, the share price damage, the CEO stepping down, etc. So there's the there's the risk element, to manage risks and avoid those risks, but also with more and more companies setting ambitious science based Net Zero targets in order to comply with those targets and be on their own trajectory to get to net zero by 2040, 2050, you know, they're looking to work with other companies in their supply chain. Yeah, also align with them. So you're also,
Chris Rainey 14:14
yeah. So if you want to be a partner of a lot of these companies, you have to meet, meet their requirements, basically, absolutely,
Luke Wynne 14:20
and we're seeing that more and more so science based targets. Is this certification that critiques and accredits a company's net zero target as to whether or not it's aligned with how
Chris Rainey 14:32
you hear people saying, we want to be net zero by this date. They like. It seems some of these targets seem just super like, up in the air. Yes, finger in the air, yeah, literally, like, and a lot, and I feel like, because, because that gets thrown around a lot, people just kind of like, ah, like, they let you know that, oh, that's not really, you know. Is that even achievable even? And how do you even measure that? What does that look like? Like? How like? Give us a bit of insight how that so that world there are, there
Luke Wynne 14:57
are various different elements you need. To meet in order to be an officially science based target, and that's assessed by an organization called the science based targets initiative. And already, okay, this is new to me, yes. So off the back, off the back of the Paris conference of parties, the big annual climate change meeting of governments around the world, back in 2015 is where the whole concept of net zero came from and all the world leaders at that conference agreed that we would work towards being net zero by 2050 and limiting the warming of the planet by 1.5 degrees centigrade above kind of average levels. And so in order to work out whether or not the corporate world is adhering to that global target, the science based targets initiative came together a group of NGOs and charities, etc, with the sole purpose of reviewing corporate targets. So you know, to put it really simply, one measure that they look at is, what is your company's reliance on carbon offsets to get down to net zero? Because you could measure your carbon emissions here today, do a carbon audit, understand, through your energy consumption and travel, etc, what your annual carbon emissions are. And you could say, right? They're 20,000 tons, right? I'm gonna go and plant enough trees to suck in 20,000 tons of carbon and offset 100% of my emissions. That's not net zero carbon. You could call that carbon neutral. It's not net zero. That's where that technology so there is, there is a difference. There is a difference, and most people don't understand the difference. There are some subtle but important the difference between, what's the two difference two things, carbon neutral or net zero carbon, what's the main difference? So net zero carbon is a real kind of prioritized pathway to get to net zero. It starts with measuring, understanding what your emissions are today, to get your baseline. The next step in that process is to reduce, to do everything you can to reduce your carbon emissions associated with your operations. So you know energy reducing energy consumption, etc. Then you go replace so making sure that the energy coming in to power the lights, to run the laptops, etc, is coming in from a renewable source. Now, if you're in a big industrial estate, then you could plaster the roost with solar panels, and you could create your renewable energy onsite, fantastic, if not and you haven't got that space, making sure what you're procuring in is renewable. And then so measure, reduce, replace, and then as a last resort, to get down to zero carbon offset. So to come back to the question, science based targets, initiatives require a company to rely on 10% or less carbon offsets and to go through those other steps, because if you pay to have trees planted to offset your emissions, they might get cut down. They might get burned down. You know, it's really difficult. So carbon offsets are really important, but the carbon offset world is a little bit like the Wild West, so it's a last resort. Those other steps are really important first, yeah,
Chris Rainey 17:48
let's kind of switch gears and talk about, then how that comes into our workplaces and our offices, and how we reimagine the workspace. Yeah, and it'd be great to share some of the specific data points that you shared, and also like what some of the hardware, software technology that's being used to do that, because I think it's super fascinating. Some of the things that I've learned i only ever knew know about, which most people probably just walk past every day that have no idea, absolutely,
Luke Wynne 18:20
absolutely. And I think so, I think probably a good place to start is to come back to your commercial question as well, and bring that back to HR as well. Because, you know, aside from all of those legislative and financial drivers that are driving this when it comes to HR and things like the increasingly difficult, challenging war for talent, oh, yeah, let's
Chris Rainey 18:40
not skip that.
Luke Wynne 18:41
There's a huge, huge opportunity when it comes to sustainability. Yeah, there's some really recent and fascinating research out there that I've seen. One from KPMG from from last year that looked at office workers in the UK, and a really shocking but impressive start at the same time, they found was that one in 318 to 24 year olds in the UK reported turning down an actual job offer because the company offering the jobs ESG sustainability credentials didn't match their own expectations, and this is reflected more globally as well. There's some great research by Paul Polman and his Institute after the former Unilever CEO, and he found that in the US and the UK, across all kind of workforce generations, one in three people had reported leaving a job because the values of the company didn't match their own values. And when he looked more closely at Gen Z and millennials, found that that went up to almost 50% and when you consider that by 2025 next year, 75% of the global workforce will be millennials. This is a trend that's only going to really ramp up. More and more people want to work with a career that gives them purpose. More and more people want to work for a company that they feel is doing the right thing by society and the right thing by the environment they feel proud of working for. So. So from a from an HR point of view, and attracting and retaining that best talent, then being able to present and talk about genuinely ambitious and real sustainability credentials is really important, yeah, so it is a matter of staying relevant, you know, to your current and future talent.
Chris Rainey 20:19
Yeah, I love that. Let's switch gears. Of then, how does that show up? Yeah, in the workplace, in
Luke Wynne 20:26
so many ways, I think, you know, we at JLL. We obviously really trying to push the envelope in this place and our you know, so much of what we do is about the workplace. We manage buildings in much of the work that we do for for our clients and and one of our own clients, are. One of our biggest clients is ourselves, our JLL, for JLL, yeah, we've got 100,000 people in buildings all around the world. So, you know, thinking about the workplace that people are coming into every single day, and balancing both amenities for people with net zero carbon be really easy to have a net zero carbon building if I had no windows, because you didn't get, you know, heat loss or solar gain, no doors, etc, but people aren't going to want to work there. So, you know, you want to have great natural light, you want to really think about the air quality. Indoor air quality is so, so important. JL did some research with Harvard University a few years ago that looked at this. It's not rocket science when you think about it, but they found that when indoor air quality drops and gets worse, it impacts people's cognitive function, their ability to make important decisions, their ability to concentrate, to be alert, and so that's really important, thinking about what technologies, what plants, what mechanisms you've got in the workplace To make sure that people have great air quality, you know, everything from the lighting to the color palette to the types of, you know, seating and environments you've got thinking about, what's going to help my workforce to feel better, to be happier, to be more alert? How am I going to, from a DNI perspective, have a an environment that is, you know, accessible from a disability point of view, but also for, you know, those of us who are neuro diverse, how does it, you know, provide a calm and productive workplace for them? So, you know, again, the business case, thinking about those elements is going to help you have a more productive workforce and happier workforce, which is only then good for the for the bottom line. So, you know, lots of things like that. I think coming back to the technology piece as well, and kind of combining sustainability in a building, there's some really incredible new AI technologies as well that do things like provide a digital twin of a building, so you can run that building's operations through the digital twin practice different types of decisions, to simulations to work out what, how do we make the building? Yeah, incredible.
Chris Rainey 22:45
Even just like the simple tools I don't have describing that show kind of who's in, who's not meeting. So like, people are not turning up and traveling into office and to no one's there, yep, right. So they can, you can start to see like, okay, these people are going to be in on this day. Okay, I'll go in that day. You think about the sustainability impact of people traveling, yeah, for no reason. Yeah, to government office. Now there's all sorts of different technologies. I was at an office recently as well, and they their their sustainability leader was told to me about how the whole building was designed around how people flow throughout the building, yeah, so that maximum, like, each floor is maximized, that they don't need to travel between floors to waste energy, so each floor has, like, all of the things that someone would need rather than having to travel throughout the building. I was like, what? Like, it's specifically designed the way people flow throughout the building. I was like, wow. Like, never even thought much detail.
Luke Wynne 23:45
Yeah, I mean, prior to joining JLL, my background wasn't in real estate, but it's fascinating. You know, the inner workings of buildings and the things that can be done, and a lot of it comes back to data as well, that technology and coming back to that collaborative element I was talking about earlier, from a sustainability point of view, from a workforce point of view, having access to the data the real time, single source of truth data that allows you to understand what's going on, but also to make really informed decisions about how you improve things, what you invest in in the future as well. What would you
Chris Rainey 24:16
say like when you during your work and conversations? The common, most common misconceptions that you come across about this? Yeah, I
Luke Wynne 24:23
mean, there are a lot, I think a lot of people just think, oh man. One, it's someone else's job. It's not my job. And two, it's really expensive. You know, people really think, oh man, if we're going to be more sustainable, we're going to have to retrofit, we're going to have to pay for new technology. And you know, to an extent that's true. You know, certainly in the built environment, retrofitting is a massive, massive priority, because all of the buildings that are here today, I think, in the EU alone, 97% of them don't comply with future carbon reduction targets. So we can't knock those buildings down and build new ones. We could. But the carbon intensity of that activity is enormous. We need to think about, how do we upgrade and retrofit existing buildings to make them more efficient? But the misconception is people just think, Oh, it's just going to be a costly exercise. It's going to hit the bottom line, yes, there's a bit of upfront investment, and this is part of that new way of thinking, new way of working. But the ongoing savings, you know, fundamentally, if you have a more efficient building, then it uses less energy, water, creates less waste, so utility bills are going to go down. So your operating costs can go down significantly. You're also going to be less exposed to future carbon taxes, future fines for hitting for missing performance targets. So I think there is that mindset shift and perception shift. Well,
Chris Rainey 25:41
to your point earlier, the cost of losing that talent exactly, you know, huge cost. Huge cost.
Luke Wynne 25:47
Absolutely. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 25:48
I'm not getting that even the right down to small details I'm noticing in companies and I walk in there about sustainability of their their furniture, yeah, like, recycle desks and really cool. Doesn't look like, you know, when people get recycled desk, you know, it looks really cool, but it's made out of, like, and that's flat. Imagine, like, a 50 story building, yeah, but all of the furniture is recycled and looks amazing. Yeah, you would never know that as well. Like, I can only imagine the cost savings, absolutely.
Luke Wynne 26:16
Well. Cost savings, exactly. But the carbon savings are huge because, yeah,
Chris Rainey 26:21
cutting down more trees to make more desks. Yeah, it's exactly, it's the embodied
Luke Wynne 26:25
carbon. So you've got two types of carbon in a building. You've got operational carbon, the stuff that comes from the energy you consume on the day to day, and then you've got embodied carbon, so the carbon that's hidden in the in the steel and the concrete, the fabric. So if you're using, if you're reusing furniture, for example, then the embodied carbon in that is low to zero. You know, we one of our offices in London. Our Canary Wharf office is a fantastic example of the forefront of sustainability focused workspace. It looks like a great office. It looks really fancy and new. It's a really nice space to work. All the furniture is secondhand. All of the meeting rooms and pods can be moved. So if we moved, we can take them with us that all the all the desks are old, Danone yog pots as well. You can see some of the branding stuff
Chris Rainey 27:12
like that. That's what I think, probably similar to what I saw. I could see different like materials of brand and products that have actually been recycled into the furniture last night. That's pretty cool, actually, as well. Yeah, this is visual for also people that you know, the employees that really care about it again, they kind of see it
Luke Wynne 27:25
as well exactly, and that's really important to have it as you know.
Chris Rainey 27:28
No, I love that. That's hilarious. Yeah, where this is, I can imagine, can get pretty overwhelming, though, right? There's a lot to think about. So what would your advice be to be for talent and HR leaders that listen to the show of, like, ticket, where they get, where they get started, like, when leaving begin on this journey? Yeah, seems pretty daunting. There's, you know,
Luke Wynne 27:51
it is. It's huge. I mean, the entire challenge that humanity has is complex, and, you know, unknown, but you know, I think the important thing is we feel like we're making small steps if we're not making that momentum. Now, how do we just start making small steps? And often it starts with, you know, a conversation, if you're an HR leader, go and seek out the sustainability leader, your your chief sustainability officer, and understand from them, you know, what their views are and what needs to be done. I mean, there's so many things that can be done, building it into your recruitment, you know, having a criteria to assess against a person's attributes, or knowledge or passion around sustainability, you know, building it into your onboarding program. So what you know, baseline, kind of foundational learning content are you putting into your global onboarding, so that people come in and get a baseline knowledge through to, you know, tying sustainability performance to pay to executive bonuses and that kind of thing if you really want real accountability. You know, one of the things that's happened this year at JLL is, you know, as I've said, we've set these really ambitious net zero carbon goals. It's been net zero by 2040 and they've been led and owned by our global head of sustainability and ESG and our Chief Sustainability Officer. This year, however, we formed, or those two leaders formed, our net zero carbon Council, which takes members of our global executive board across all the key client facing functions, and then internal and corporate functions across JLL, and they are taking on accountability for embedding net zero right throughout the organization. So, you know, making sure this is not just a fancy target and a bit of lip service, yeah, we've set the target. We've got a strategy in place, and now, from a governance point of view, setting up the accountability and the structures to make sure this is driven right throughout the entire organization. Yeah, and that, you know, that's really exciting, because I think it's it setting the target is the easy part, thinking about how you kind of then put the governance and structures and HR policies in place. Should.
Chris Rainey 29:59
They start that, should that also be styled a process putting in that governance and policies? I think so. Yeah. I mean, with the counterparts to build that maybe, like standing with the council, yeah, definitely, like what everyone's doing right now, of AI,
Luke Wynne 30:12
exactly 100% Yeah. And I think it's not, you know, as as humans, we're actually quite naturally compassionate and caring, and we do care about things beyond ourselves. And so while we might have all these leaders who have specific roles that aren't sustainability related, give them the opportunity to think about this and give them the space to do so then, you know, most people are quite interested and passionate about it.
Chris Rainey 30:37
So I was your point, they just think, oh, this doesn't apply to me. Yeah, exactly. And we can't blame them, because I don't think we've educated people enough to understand that actually this, you can play a significant role, yeah, in this. Because I think the master troop, who just wouldn't, they're like, oh, that's the job of this team, yeah, yeah, you get the same thing of HR and dei and well being is the role of everyone in the organization to truly make it impactful and to become part of the culture and the way of work. This is what it means to work here. Yeah, right. This is what how we do things. It can't just sit in a silo somewhere with a team. No,
Luke Wynne 31:12
absolutely not. And there's a huge groundswell from the bottom up in terms of, you know, the younger generations and how important it is to them. So coming back to kind of the role of HR and kind of next first step, it's got to come back the other way, the senior leadership of an organization need to be able to genuinely endorse and speak about this, to look genuine and be genuine to those younger generations who are prioritizing it. So you know, even at a first stage, how are you getting your senior most leadership on board and understanding it and endorsing it? And that could be putting them on external training courses. It could be collaborating with the sustainability team to create a bespoke training course for those senior leaders, because their endorsement and buy in is so critical, because there will be, you know a portion of your workforce population who think it doesn't apply to me, I know it's really important. I do care about climate change, but I've got bills to pay. Exactly. What can I do? But if they've got their business leaders who aren't sustainability professionals saying to them, This is business critical, if you want to excel in your career, if you want to really help us, you have to be embracing this. So, yeah, that's a really important message as well. We're putting a
Chris Rainey 32:24
lot on our leaders, aren't we, because we're asking them to talk about, you know, lead the way and have conversations around well being. Have conversation around dei sustainability AI. Now it's a lot that we're asking them, so we do really need to, as lnd and HR, help provide the materials, the skills, the development, basically anything that they need is a support, basically completely they need, because then otherwise, and that's part of your role, that's exactly what you're doing internally. Because when we first connected, I was, oh, this is an intro. I was like, I didn't even know this was a role in companies before, and now starting to see it evolve a lot more. And of course, it makes sense, because you're doing this externally for clients, you have to live it internally. You can't be doing that internally externally and not living that internally, right? And it's also going to allow your employees to connect better with your customers, and that's going to become a much better service. And they're gonna, you know, it's gonna the ripple effect, yeah, that's gonna be known. Is anything that we have missed, that you want to cover like you think's important.
Luke Wynne 33:32
Look, I think the main, the main message for me, I guess, is this, you know, evolution of the workforce and that sustainability has been a growing thing, you know, across all industries, but we are at the point now where it becomes the remit of everyone, and so it is time to kind of to lean into that, and to not be intimidated by it, and embrace it. Because, you know, we do need new ways of working to take this forward and to address these challenges. And if we are thinking someone else's job doesn't really apply to me, I know I should know about this stuff, but I feel too embarrassed to ask, then we're not going to make the progress we need to make. So for people to feel confident that they don't know everything, but not hesitant or not resistant to leaning into it, I think would be my main kind of Yeah, summary message, I guess. And that's everyone from senior leadership down to, you know, graduates,
Chris Rainey 34:29
where can firstly appreciate you coming on show. Glad we Pleasure to meet in person. And I think the work you're doing is fascinating, like as well multiple from multiple points of view. As you explained, you and the team also create some incredible research. So where's the best place for people to learn more about you, the business, and hopefully access some of that information?
Luke Wynne 34:52
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think we're a global company, you know, 80 countries, etc, so I think pop into the surge. Engine, JLL sustainability. It's going to take you to our main kind of global sustainability site. There'll be our latest ESG sustainability report from a couple of couple of months ago that was released there. And you can get some really good insight there. And then there'll be other links and various things through to, you know, research. But beyond the research that JLL does, you know, there's so much incredible research done by all you know, kind of leading companies and academic institutions out there. So, you know, it's if you've got a bit of a an interest, a burgeoning passion in this area, there's so much out there to consume. But, yeah, I'd say Google, JL, sustainability, and I'll do
Chris Rainey 35:39
one, but everyone listening, I'm going to put a link below, perfect, great, wherever they were. I'm going to find the links that are report end of being. I want to make sure you all click on it. There's no excuses. Yeah, great. Whatever you're watching or listening right now, there's going to be a link in the description, brilliant. And for you to best place to catch you. LinkedIn, yes, definitely. LinkedIn, yep, amazingly. So make sure you reach out. I think what's cool about your role is you're doing it on both sides, yeah. So you're really interesting dynamic of delivering it, seeing it come through and and also delivering it internally, yeah, must be quite super interesting for you to see it. It's
Luke Wynne 36:10
super interesting. It is. It really is. And you know, the content, the messaging, is much the same. It's not It's hugely different. But yeah, there's such a growing need for it. And you know, what's really encouraging is, on the client side, it's exciting, obviously, but seeing other organizations having the same realization, wow, we've got a really upskiller workforce, and taking a proactive approach to that, I think, is, you know, it's only a good thing,
Chris Rainey 36:33
yeah. Well, listen, man, I appreciate you coming on the show, and I wish all the best
Luke Wynne 36:37
absolute pleasure. Thanks for having me.
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Luke Wynne, Head of Sustainability Learning at JLL.