Amidst recent crippling heat waves in Europe, flash floods in India, and unprecedented wildfires in the U.S. and Canada, it is clear that climate change is impacting the workforce globally.
We spoke with Emily Rose McRae, Senior Director Analyst in the Gartner HR practice, to discuss why organizations should look to include and promote climate change protection as part of their benefit offerings.
Journalists who would like to speak with Emily Rose McRae regarding this topic can contact Mary.Baker@gartner.com or Gerri.Weinberger@gartner.com. Members of the media can reference this material in articles with proper attribution to Gartner.
Q: Why should organizations offer climate change protection as an employee benefit?
A: As natural disasters, such as wildfires, hurricanes and flooding move from localized and episodic to widespread and persistent, organizations should make climate change disaster response plans a more explicit and transparent part of their employee value proposition (EVP).
In a Gartner survey of 300 enterprises conducted in June 2023, 37% of employers found that following environmental or climate-related risks there was a severe impact on staff displacement and productivity.
Planning ahead and incorporating climate change protection into their EVP enables organizations not just to offset major work disruptions, but also to make the ways they support employees an explicit part of why employees want to work there.
For employees and candidates, knowing that their employer is aware of, and proactively trying to minimize, the impact of climate change-related disasters on their physical, financial, and emotional well-being is a major draw.
Q: What types of climate change protection can organizations offer?
A: Leading organizations are experimenting with different climate change benefits for employees, such as:
- Explicit commitments to physical safety: Organizations can develop proactive plans to offer shelter, energy, and provisions when natural disasters arrive.
Climate change protection can include offering underutilized corporate real estate as potential locations for employees to evacuate to, providing evacuation support such as transportation or supplies for the possibility of losing electricity or running water.
- Compensation to impacted employees: Organizations can provide monetary benefits or designated PTO to those who experience hardship during a climate-related event. This could look like subsidies for short-term housing, relocation assistance, disaster-related leave, or stipends for specialized safety equipment as an explicit component of organizations' benefits packages.
Some organizations make bulk purchases of critical supplies, such as shelf-stable meals, bottled water, air purifiers or solar-powered radios, and distribute these to employees.
On-site workers are particularly vulnerable to the financial impacts of climate-related events due to lost wages. As these disruptions become more common employers can reduce attrition and increase the attractiveness of their frontline roles by explicitly communicating how they will handle different potential scenarios where a worksite is unsafe or inaccessible due to natural disaster.
- Mental health support: When it comes to climate change protection, it’s not just about offering mental health support tools such as employee assistance programs and access to therapy apps. Employers need to acknowledge the toll of chronic climate stress on employee wellbeing and look for ways to alleviate some of that burden.
One thing we’ve seen organizations do is create a direct line expert in navigating the various federal programs, local programs, and employer benefits that are available, removing the pressure for employees to sort through complex administrative burdens during climate-related events. These experts are typically already employed by the organization’s existing employee assistance program (EAP), so it’s not about adding a new benefit so much as making it easier for employees to access the benefit and letting them know that this specific benefit is available.
Q: What other steps should HR leaders take to assist employees during a crisis?
A: An organization’s CHRO will generally take the lead in helping employees affected by a major shock, but they should work with leaders across the business to take the following actions to support their staff:
- Check on employees: Functional or business unit leaders should speak with employees to understand what assistance they may need. Are they in physical danger? Has their ability to work been compromised? CHROs can collect input from business leaders to identify quick wins and areas for critical investment.
- Hold informal listening sessions: Leaders should engage in two-way dialogue on what the organization can and cannot do, internally and externally, and report what they’ve heard to the CHRO or other executives so this information can factor into their decision making.
- Plan for the future: HR leaders can collect and review lessons learned from past climate change related-events to identify opportunities for strategies and actions to incorporate into the organization's crisis management plans. CHROs should ask for the opportunity to review scenario plans related to natural disasters to see if there are any talent-related considerations the planning team missed, and to highlight the ways that the organization can explicitly support employees in different scenarios.
Gartner clients can read more in the report: "How Major Shocks Affect Employees — and How You Can Support Them."
About the Gartner HR Practice
The Gartner HR practice brings together the best relevant content approaches across Gartner to offer individual decision makers strategic business advice on the mission-critical priorities that cut across the HR function. Additional information is available at http://www.gartner.com/en/human-resources/human-resources-leaders. Follow news and updates from the Gartner HR practice on X and LinkedIn using #GartnerHR. Members of the media can find additional information and insights in the Gartner HR Newsroom.
