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What if a more environmentally sustainabledaily life could be built where a large part of the adult population spendsmost of their weekdays: at work? The core of our TILKE project has been toexplore and promote the collective agency of the workplace community,transcending professional and hierarchical boundaries, especially in managingclimate change and adapting to the phenomenon. By agency, we mean aforward-looking approach and the ability to make purposeful changes to currentpractices.
Perhaps surprisingly, the workplace haslong been overlooked in climate discussions. While development literaturetraditionally emphasizes the inclusion of local communities, research andpublic discussion on climate change have primarily focused on societaldecision-making or the perspectives of individual consumers. However,workplaces and various forms of work communities can also be considered aslocal communities, and their inclusion in climate work is crucial.
Cross-boundary collaboration
Work communities participating in the TILKEproject come from very different sectors; including a fire department unit, aprimary education institution, and a company providing textile and laundryservices. A key goal in the workshops organized in these organizations has beento support work communities in transcending usual boundaries of agency.
It has been inspiring to brainstormconcrete actions that make the daily life of the work community moresustainable. Often, the interdisciplinary group gathered for a developmentworkshop had not previously held any joint meetings (e.g., at the school, educationalstaff, nutrition, and cleaning professionals). Initially, there may also nothave been a clear picture of what to focus on for development. However, climatechange and the desire to do something for the environment unite people acrossprofessional and job description boundaries.
Experiments challenged rethinking work life
Work communities engaged in various typesof development experiments. School staff revamped dining practices to makevegetarian options more readily available to students and made waste reductiona collective issue. They also invested in more precise waste sorting. In therescue sector, ideas were generated on how to reorganize work distribution infire inspection tasks to manage with fewer kilometers driven, which also allowsfor the use of electric vehicles. Water use sparked a lot of discussion—from thewater used for maintenance and washing of equipment to where raw water for fireextinguishing should ideally be sourced in the future. The textile care companyexperimented with a regularly recurring 'green week' concept, where current,community-relevant green themes are highlighted for a week. Additionally,workplace temperature conditions sparked experiments to support employeewell-being and endurance as extreme weather conditions increase now and in thefuture.
As described above, the experiments variedgreatly in scope, which is why their implementation and adoption also requiredvarying amounts of time and resources. Change never occurs without friction.Development is done alongside all other work, and pressures for change alsocome from outside the community: for example, the rescue sector was challengedby the well-being area reform during the project. Sometimes, establishedhierarchical boundaries and decision-making channels extending beyond the workcommunity slow down the adoption of even seemingly simple reforms. Forinstance, getting vegetarian food to the start of the school lunch linerequired close cooperation between the school and nutrition services: Fooddistribution is centrally managed at the municipal level, and processes down tothe size of dishes and transport carts are finely tuned. It was not so simpleto move vegetable patties in front of meatballs on the food line!
Smallchanges towards more sustainable daily life
Why spend time on things that seem trivial, like the placement of vegetarian food? Because small streams form large rivers.The school community also discussed how to get children to eat more vegetablesand salads. Educational staff and kitchen professionals discussed the format inwhich salads should be presented to make them appealing to children: unmixed,as separate components. We don't know precisely what or who influenced eachchange or if chance played a role, but recently, news from Yle reported that inthat municipality, salads began to be delivered as separate components to allschools. In our partner school, the tasting of vegetarian food had increased,and salad consumption had grown by even half. Not a minor change, especiallywhen many of the eaters are the adults of the future, who will impact both asprofessionals and as consumers.
All development experiments are themselvessteps towards a more sustainable daily life at the participating workplaces.Representatives from different fields successfully combined their professionalskills in beneficial ways. However, we live in the midst of a tangle of vexingglobal problems, regardless of the field. No one can say with certainty whichsolution will stand the test of time and where practices need to be changedvery rapidly. Therefore, it is crucial to foster a community learning abilitythat fears neither professional nor hierarchical boundaries and a willingnessto try new ways of operating. The most important result of the TILKE project,in my opinion, is how work communities have subsequently described wanting tocontinue influencing things and also challenging partners or decision-makers tojoin in the reforms. Only together can we find new, more sustainable solutions.Who should your work community collaborate with to brainstorm ecologicallysustainable practices and processes?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author works at the Finnish Instituteof Occupational Health as a senior expert and is currently the project managerfor the "Workplaces as Climate Actors – Co-developing SustainableSolutions" project (TILKE). TILKE is funded by the Occupational SafetyFund, the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health, JHL, and the participatingworkplaces. The author specializes in the transformation processes of work andwork communities and in development methods that promote collective learningand agency.
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