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Spotted: Hybrid working has increased during the pandemic. While reduced commuter travel leads to less pollution, the evolving work environment is creating challenges when it comes to engaging employees with efforts to reduce emissions – both at home and in the office. At the same time, the need to monitor and mitigate employee emissions is being driven by companies’ adoption of scope 3 net-zero targets.

To fully understand their scope 3 emissions (defined as emissions from the entire value chain), companies need to understand their employees’ carbon footprint and energy usage habits when they are working from home. Until now, efforts to do this have been hobbled by a lack of tools for capturing and reporting the necessary data. To address this, ESG employee experience platform WeSpire has developed a technology solution to ‘measure, reduce, balance, and report’ employee carbon emissions.

Not only does WeSpire’s technology allow companies to better monitor emissions – it also empowers them to take positive action. Many companies’ instinct is to immediately reach for the comfort blanket of carbon offsetting to mitigate their environmental impact. The WeSpire solution, by contrast, encourages them to avoid offsetting in the first instance. Instead, the ‘Employee Carbon Management Solution’ empowers companies to engage their employees to make emissions reductions through prescribed steps based in behavioural science. Beyond this, remaining emissions can be offset through high-quality offset opportunities provided by project partners South Pole, a leading climate solutions provider and project developer.

“We’ve pioneered a data-first, behaviour-change solution to drive much needed personal climate action in the workplace,” explains Susan Hunt Stevens, Founder & CEO of WeSpire. “Our technology enables organisations to engage their employees to better understand their own impact, take targeted carbon reduction actions, and, when needed, the company or employees can balance what remains.”

Global conglomerate Cox Enterprises were also partners on the project.

WeSpire is not the only company to develop a technology platform for engaging employees on ESG. Springwise recently spotted EarthUp, a SaaS platform that aims to make it easier and less time consuming to include employees in a company’s sustainability initiatives. Software is playing an important role in helping companies pursue climate targets. Another platform SustainCERT will will allow companies to quantify and verify the impact of interventions to clean-up supply chains.

Written by: Matthew Hempstead