Employee suggestions drive reduced carbon footprint and enhanced Investors in the Environment accreditation for the CIPD

The CIPD has secured the Investors in the Environment (iiE) silver accreditation after impressing auditors with a robust environmental sustainability strategy and environmental management system. A range of policies, initiatives and monitoring systems have enabled us to significantly reduce our scope 1 and 2 carbon footprint since we were first awarded the Bronze accreditation in 2023.  

The biggest impact came following an employee suggestion to close our head office on Fridays, which helped us to: 

• cut our electricity use by 21% 
• reduce our gas use by 27% 
• shrink our waste by 27%.

Other initiatives that contributed to these impressive reductions included turning off some non-essential lighting, replacing lightbulbs with LEDs, reducing water leakage, stopping some of our IT systems from running 24 hours a day, and switching to a green tariff for our electricity supply. 

The iiE auditors also praised us for our work to improve sustainability in other areas of our operations: 

• We’ve added a standard on environmental sustainability to the business acumen core knowledge of the Profession Map 
• We’ve published external guides and thought pieces on environmental sustainability  
• We’ve integrated sustainability into our external learning content  
• We’ve held ESG (environmental, social and governance) sessions at our flagship Annual Conference and Festival of Work events 
• We’ve moved our People Management magazine to a quarterly publication schedule to halve the print frequency.  

Our accreditation follows recent news of us joining the United Nations Global Compact, and winning the ‘best newcomer’ the 2023 iiE Awards. We’re now working with our internal Green Group to make further improvements to meet the criteria for green accreditation – the highest iiE accolade – with a focus on reducing our business travel emissions.  

Having a positive and sustained social and environmental impact should be a priority for all businesses and their leaders. Explore how you can embed environmental sustainability initiatives into your organisation with real-life case studies from global organisations Deloitte, SUEZ and Smurfit Kappa Group plc. Unearth practical tips from our dedicated guide, and get a better understanding of the impact of inaction by listening to our podcast.