Getting results: Poppulo’s sustainability campaign

Here’s how Poppulo increased sustainability best practice with an employee-driven awareness campaign that engaged and measurably increased company-wide understanding and participation.

The Challenge

Recognizing that a company’s business activities can have a direct impact on the environment, Poppulo set a goal last year to educate, empower and inspire employees around sustainability.

Getting Started

In June 2019, a Poppulo Sustainability Team of 13 employees was formed. A five-month campaign plan was developed – with goals set, tactics created, and key performance indicators picked to help measure success.

Goals: To raise awareness about sustainability in today’s workplace, and how employees could help protect the environment.

• Tactics: A multi-channel campaign with the aim of educating, empowering and inspiring all employees – this included educational materials, conversation-starters and a calendar of events and activities.
• Success: A measurable increase in employee’s awareness and understanding of what sustainability is. Plus, access to metrics in engagement resulting from the five-month campaign.

The Strategy

Kicked off with a survey

The team sent employees a short survey to establish a baseline understanding of sustainability. An identical survey was sent at the end of the five-month campaign, giving the Team metrics to measure the campaign’s success.

Ask the Expert town hall

Sustainability experts Change by Degrees gave a presentation on-site at the company HQ. It was designed to educate and inspire attendees to be more sustainable – with expert insights practical tips, and plenty of time for questions.

Change by Degrees session with Poppulo employees, Cork office – Ireland.

Change by Degrees partnered with Poppulo to co-design a sustainability campaign that brought together existing initiatives such as community projects with new educational activities and messaging to engage the whole company. The campaign used the Poppulo mobile app to share video and blogs Change by Degrees had created alongside content created by the Poppulo employees themselves. The mix of information made sure there was something for everyone to get involved in and the tone was always playful and fun.

“Being engaged as a partner from the outset, working closely with the motivated Sustainability Team who had the full support of senior management, and the openness and interest of all employees to learn and to make a difference, made this a wonderful campaign to work on.”



— Tara Shine, Change by Degrees

“Poppulo is showing its commitment to sustainability by making sure that their employees have the knowledge and motivation,” she said.

Reaching and Engaging Every Employee

Poppulo’s Sustainability Team took a multi-channel approach in their campaign to ensure they reached all employees.

1. Channel: The team used the Poppulo mobile app to engage employees on the move. They featured colleague stories, videos and blogs provided by Change by Degree and links to useful websites – such as how colleagues used alternatives to travel to work rather than use their cars. They also shared insight into the most popular electric cars which triggered much discussion.
2. Result: Using the powerful insight provided by the Poppulo reporting metrics, the team learned that their readers were most engaged with real-life stories from their colleagues – so were able to incorporate this into the future campaign content.

Travelling to work without a car, Cork office employees – Ireland.

1. Channel: The team also used Poppulo surveys to measure awareness and interest throughout the campaign. One example was the transport survey that the team ran in August to find out how colleagues traveled to work – capturing information such as the distances traveled, their preferences regarding different modes of transport and if they were open to alternative methods of travel such as participating in a Carpool arrangement.
2. Result: They gathered valuable information on employee travel trends and are in the process of building a Smarter Travel Program.

Survey sent out by the Sustainability team to measure awareness at the start of the campaign.

1. Channel: The Sustainability Team sent a monthly email newsletter through Poppulo to inform employees of what the company is doing in terms of sustainability – the aim was to empower people to feel they can make a significant difference as individuals.
2. Result: The communications achieved 80% open rates throughout the campaign – showing high engagement with the content.

Branded newsletter communication.

1. Channel: Group activities The Sustainability Team organized a beach clean, where several employees volunteered to spend three hours cleaning a local beach.
2. Result: They used Poppulo to promote the beach clean to those that had previously expressed an interest – and resend it to those that hadn’t responded. The Team was able to tailor communications to employees based on location, for example targeting colleagues in the Ireland office with local events.

Beach clean with Cork office employees – Ireland.

A great success

“I always open the Sustainability Team’s email newsletters. The content is put together very well and has a really nice mix of articles. From practical tips to understanding the wider impact of sustainability on our world, there’s always something for me to take away.”



— Ruth Egan, Head of Customer Experience, Poppulo

Along with the success achieved through each of the channels, the Team was also able to prove success through the results of the outcome survey run at the end of the five-month campaign.

The Outcome Survey proved a success

At the end of the campaign the team revisited their key success metric: Had they seen a measurable increase in employee’s awareness and understanding of what sustainability is? The results were impressive:

• An overall response increase of 30%.
• Do you feel confident that you have a clear understanding of what “Sustainability” is? This received a positive response up from 54% up to 81%.
• Do you feel that you recycle effectively, both in and out of the workplace?
• Positive response up from 55% up to 77%.
• Do you feel that you make a positive personal impact on your local environment? Positive response up from 80% up to 89%.
• Results from the Great Places To Work survey, highlighted that our employees are recognizing that Poppulo are working to reduce our environmental impact, this went from 63% last year to 88% this year which is a great indicator in terms of progress.

“It was great to see the type of posts and articles that were popular so that we could make sure we got our message across in the best way possible. Making sure that we didn’t waste time creating content that few people were reading.”



— Alice Glendinning, Project Manager, Poppulo