Natacha Reymond

Natacha Reymond is the Sustainability Initiatives Coordinator at EHL Hospitality Business School in Switzerland, where she helps to develop a purpose-led programme that engages both EHL staff and students across 3 campuses.

Programme Mission

EHL addresses sustainability through four pillars: Education, People, Community and Environment. Each of these pillars is made of a variety of quantitative and qualitative objectives, which they tackle through various initiatives and projects throughout the year, such as skills-based exchanges with partner organisations.

To plan relevant and engaging initiatives for a range of profiles from staff to students to alumni, the organisation puts together activities that are brought forward by members of their community.

Sustainability Week

Throughout the entire month of March, EHL improves the organisation’s engagement surrounding the topic of sustainability by challenging students and staff to consider their personal environmental impact. By offering challenges, created and hosted within the Benevity platform, they inspire everyone involved to make slight changes to daily habits that have a big effect.

To make it easy to organise events wherein employees compete to earn points for completing specific actions, they connect all parties through a user-friendly CSR platform. Then, to boost engagement throughout the month, they tap into the competitive nature of students and staff by incentivising them to earn the most points on the platform – with winners receiving a prize.

“We must let people participate because they choose to, and not because they feel forced. That’s why letting them choose their own cause helps tremendously: they are having an impact on something they care about. But having prizes and incentives can also help!”

Natacha Reymond – Sustainability Initiatives Coordinator at EHL

Their Sustainability Week event consisted of various events across their three campuses in Switzerland, and Singapore including an earth-inspired Escape Room, meatless meals, clothes swapping, and environmentally conscious challenges proposed by students.

Results

• 137 unique contributors
• 203 hours dedicated to helping the environment
• 3,363 kg of C02 saved thanks to their efforts
• 1,536 litres of water saved thanks to their efforts

Thanks to their Sustainability Week, the EHL community completed 96 challenges with the dedication of over 203 hours to helping the environment. The output of which is equivalent to 3,363 kg of CO2 and 1,536 litres of water saved.

Moreover, they’ve seen higher quality engagement, as the Benevity platform enables team members to share their personal experience with the challenges together in one place.

“Working with a purpose-driven CSR platform, like Benevity, helps communicate our programme and initiatives effectively, encouraging both staff and students to participate.”

Natacha Reymond – Sustainability Initiatives Coordinator at EHL

Engaging EHL staff and students remotely

Another element of their programme is how they reach students with relevant volunteering activities no matter where they are.

EHL also gives access to remote volunteering options through Benevity, allowing staff and students to participate and donate their time without necessarily being on the field. These actions can be the translation of documents or participating in social media management for associations.

For students, it’s a great opportunity to gather experience and staff members often take advantage of it because it’s an effective option for people looking to dedicate their time to a cause outside of EHL-led initiatives.

Do you have any advice for companies who are looking to engage their people on the topic of sustainability?

Natacha said, “It’s really helpful to have a dedicated member of Benevity to help grow the participation. But even more importantly, on the ground, we need to value the members who do use Benevity regularly and who are the best ambassadors for the platform. That’s the case for any sustainability initiative: those interested in the topic will spread the word faster than the organisation can. Thus, we rely heavily on our engaged community to share and organise their team outings, but also our Sustainability Committee to represent the values and share on the platform.”