We embibe in each associate a deep sense of responsibility through various mechanisms of engagement, thereby each associate is part of The Green Army.
Mahindra Lifespaces has been an early adopter of sustainability. We encourage our associates to make sustainability a part of their personal endeavours – in order to champion a lasting, positive change. We strive to build a culture wherein sustainability becomes a part of the DNA of our employees, and their everyday actions lead to energy, water savings, waste reduction, and climate mitigation. This approach of combining sustainability initiatives and employee engagement has cascading positive impacts for employers and employees alike, and the communities they live in. ‘Making Sustainability Personal (MSP)’ is our flagship initiative to encourage our employees become change makers and make sustainability a part of their daily actions. It identifies areas where our employees can contribute the most - reduce paper consumption, reduce plastic consumption, energy efficiency, and waste segregation through their actions. We run several MSP campaigns to increase awareness and adoption of sustainable practices under the #IamGreenArmy
Similar to other initiatives at Mahindra Lifespaces, MSP is an interactive and dynamic process. We have also institutionalised the Japanese philosophy of ‘Kaizen – continuous improvement’ to seek ideas on how to incorporate sustainability considerations in our operations. We identify and recognise employees who make smart lifestyle choices and implement initiatives that leads to conservation of essential resources.
Making sustainability personal which focused on what individuals can do has touched the chord of our associates, bringing in ideas, suggestions and initiatives that help the organisation embrace sustainability in all functions and aspects of business.
We follow a step approach for making sustainability personal.
Our endeavour has been not only to make sustainability personal but to unmask the complexity from the topic and make it attainable by everyone.We have gradually moved from awareness to participation and correlation to work in our sustainability journey.
We make our employees aware of the best practices and ways to imbibe and lead a sustainabile life both at the personal and professional level through number of awareness campaigns.
1. Mondays are for Making Sustainability Personal
An initiative wherein our employees shared their stories on how they are doing their bit to integrate sustainability in their lives in small and big ways.We found nature lovers, gardeners, composters, tree savers, stray dog lovers, believers in recycling, water savers, waste segregators, humanitarian empathetic about labor wellbeing, cyclists, artists with a twist (best out of waste), vegetarians, walkers, public transportation lovers, ride sharers, users of natural beauty products, users of organic food, growers of organic food, and the likes amongst our employees. The initiative helped us understand that simple individual actions have a cascading effect at home, neighborhood and at work and helps bring large societal change.
2. Ways to heal the body, mind and earth
Ways to Heal the Mind, Body and the Earth campaign was launched post the pandemic related lockdown to help employees adopt sustainability in their daily lives as they adapted to the new work from home routine. The genesis of the series on ‘Lockdown MSP’ emailers was to connect with the employees during the pandemic to share ways and ideas on how they, as individuals, could make smart personal choices for a better world for future generations.
3. Thinking Thursday
'Thinking Thursday' was yet another email series under 'awareness' category, wherein we created awareness on innovative building materials and technologies amongst out employees.
Raising awareness amongst employees on the various sustainability aspects that can be incorporated into the daily lives both at home and work, was followed by sessions on how they could actually participate and make changes in leading a sustainable lifestyle.
1. Make the Switch
On 24 Oct 2020, we launched 'Make the Switch' initiative that enabled associates and customers to "Make the Switch". Making the switch is about getting a better understanding on how our choices have an impact on our health, wellbeing and planet health. On 'World Earth Day' 2021, we organized a session on ways to measure and conserve energy as part of the 'Make the switch' initiative for our associates. Also, customer level engagement session was also organized to help them understand ways to save energy and money by switching to energy efficient electrical
equipments in their homes.
Various workshops were organized on food choices, energy conservation, waste management for associates and customers. We also organised a two-day green product mela with attractive discounts on green products such as lights, fans, and personal care products.
2. #Water2me Challenge
We invited our project sites to report on water-related challenges and actions taken to conserve water during the #Water2me challenge on World Water Day.
3. #MahindraEcoBrickChallenge
Through our social media campaign named #MahindraEcoBrickChallenge, we encouraged the community to clean up water bodies by creating an ecobrick. This initiative was also appreciated by the Ministry of Jal Shakti.
We organised the ‘In Conversation’ series where we invited change makers to engage with our employees, motivate them towards sustainability, and encourage them to make a difference. The sessions saw participation from more than 100 employees.
We continue to expand these initiatives and explore new ones to increase our employee engagement on sustainability and influence them to bring the change in their lives to maintain a habitable planet.