Why more managers are going back to nature
Waking up in the cool of the morning in a wood near Reading, southern England, with the first rays of dawn streaming through his bivouac and a crick in his neck, Steve Waygood could be forgiven for thinking he’d signed up to the wrong course.
But this is “experiential learning” in the raw: an increasingly popular practice used by businesses to connect their workforce to the real-world substance of their environmental policies.
As head of responsible investment at UK insurer Aviva, Waygood is already more on board than most. But eco hat or no, he still sees the value of ditching his suit for a few days and stepping into the wild. “If we forget to savour the world,” he says, quoting the acclaimed American children’s writer, E B White, “what possible reason do we have for saving it?”
Exasperated corporate environment departments might very well be asking themselves the same question. For all the rhetoric about business sustainability and ESG in recent years, little appears to be sticking.
According to a recent global survey by UK communications agency Kite Insights, the majority [56 per cent] of workers are unable to explain their own companies’ climate commitments — despite an overwhelming propensity [77 per cent] to act on the issue.
So, could abandoning the classroom and heading into the hills potentially close this worrying disconnect?
Andres Roberts has little doubt. Founder of the Bio-Leadership Project, a nature-inspired UK consultancy and fellowship network, he is a veteran leader of training experiences for organisations such as the Barbican Centre, food retailer Better Food, and cosmetics group Natura. He is also the man behind Waygood’s sleep-out in the woods — part of a weekend retreat geared towards, in Roberts’ own words, “rekindling our capacity to see the bigger picture”.
By conventional training standards, his methods are unorthodox, ranging from game-playing and campfire chats to journaling and (literal) blue-sky brainstorming. Drawing on a foundational belief that being in nature is the best way to learn about nature, Roberts recently helped design a tailored training programme for the European division of US outdoor clothing brand, Patagonia.
Held in a forest outside the Dutch city of Utrecht, the “Earth University”, as Patagonia dubs it, seeks to encourage employees to connect with the company’s stated mission — namely, the somewhat ambitious pledge to “save our home planet”. Describing it as the company’s “very own forest school”, Evelyn Doyle, Patagonia’s head of people and culture, insists the outdoor setting is central to the initiative’s effectiveness.
“Whether it’s sunny or wintry, we are out in the environment that we’re speaking to,” she says. “It’s about bringing people back into nature so they can learn not from PowerPoints but from the ecosystem around them.”
Anne-Marie Robles, a retail district manager for Patagonia, was only too happy to leave the formal classroom behind. Part of the Earth University’s first cohort, she describes stepping out into the forest as like “stepping into a green-screen room”.
Gone was the usual training paraphernalia of stuffy rooms and whiteboard scribbles, replaced instead by wind on her skin and earth beneath her feet.
For three days, it was a break from strategy sketches on whiteboards and instead it was the sight of trees and the feeling of wind in her hair.
“It sounds very esoteric and hippie but actually I found it a really freeing environment to approach topics from a completely different viewpoint,” she reflects.
Pukka Herbs, a Bristol-based herbal tea and supplements brand, has a very similar arrangement with The Eden Project, a south-west England-based eco-education charity. Over the course of a two-night stay, groups of 10 employees at a time undertake a range of structured and unstructured activities, from solo walks in nature to private visits to the charity’s famous indoor rainforests.
The overriding objective is for participants to have the time and space to consider the company’s values both at the “individual level” as well as “the Pukka level”, explains Suzy Stollery, the brand’s people director. “All these activities combined gradually move you from your head to your heart. So, it’s not so much a cognitive process as an embodied process, where you really feel things,” she says.
Emma Colwill attests to the impact of stepping out of a conventional learning setting. As global business development director at Pukka, her day-to-day focus is on building new markets.
But after a few days at the Eden Project (she has been three times in total), she felt able to “gain perspective” and “see things for what they are”.
“Each time I was struck by how the experience of nature-as-a-classroom allowed me to tap into my inner wisdom — so my conscious and unconscious self — which can be really valuable in a business context,” she says.
The most enthusiastic adopters of nature-as-classroom training tend to come from the more progressive end of the business spectrum (Pukka’s values of “truth”, “respect”, “clarity” and “courage”, for example, derive from ancient wisdom traditions).
But those at capitalism’s harder end are also dipping their toe in. Among them is Europe’s largest lender HSBC, which counts a longstanding training partnership with the charity Earthwatch.
To date, the UK-based bank has put more than 15,000 employees through the programme, which began as an off-site for those with direct environment-related responsibilities but is now open to staff from any function.
The shift shows a growing realisation that to deliver on bold corporate sustainability targets cannot be the job of a specialist environment team, but instead requires a wholesale buy-in.
Success here, in turn, relies on moving employee mindsets from the “what?” of environmental responsibility to the “why?”, says John Ward-Zinski, Earthwatch Europe’s business development director. “‘Why is this important?’ ‘Why is our organisation spending so much time on this stuff?’ ‘Why should I care?’ Having employees start to ask these questions is how to get beyond the box-ticking that is still so common in many companies,” he maintains.
But packing off employees with their hiking boots and wet-weather gear requires an added layer of effort on everyone’s part, employer and employee alike. So, is it really worth it?
George Ferns, a lecturer in organisational studies and sustainability at Cardiff University, insists it is. Employees with a connection to nature exhibit a stronger sense of purpose, he states, as well as a greater willingness to execute their employer’s environment plans. Yet, nature-based training is not without its challenges, he concedes. One immediate concern is maintaining employees’ initial engagement. A week or two back at the grindstone and memories of the scent of honeysuckle and lilt of birdsong can quickly fade.
“The hope is that the lessons from these experiences trickle down into people’s operational daily lives, but the effect often fizzles out as people get on with their work,” Ferns says.
Encouraging participants to write down their key reflections or to establish clear resolutions can help sustain the positive outcomes of a course, he suggests.
Some companies also look to incorporate features of nature-based learning into their office environments. Pukka, for instance, now has a dedicated, tech-free “retreat space” in its main office, where employees can head for a quiet moment of reflection, say, or a spot of yoga.
A larger challenge, arguably, is the very real possibility of a clash of cultures. As business-friendly as these alternative training providers try to be, their world is one of protecting the planet, not hitting targets or shifting products. In that respect, participants can expect lots of invitations to “be present”, plus plenty of talk of “interconnectivity”, “regenerative thinking”, and similar ecologically minded concepts.
Pam Horton, manager of The Eden Project’s leadership programmes, admits that some participants can find the experience uncomfortable, especially initially.
If people can be patient and avoid getting hung up about having to turn off their phones or even hug a tree, however, then the effects can be profound.
“We have a lot of people who come to us who haven’t ever really just stopped and immersed themselves in nature [but] when they do, the effects can be really massive,” says Horton.
Even so, for the hardened urbanite unaccustomed to the outdoors, the idea of a camp-out or even a night-time stroll in a dark wood can still feel daunting.
Aviva’s Waygood is consequently cautious about companies mandating employees to participate, but his strong advice remains that everyone should give it a go at least once. The only exception are the out-and-out cynics. Not only will they fail to get anything out of the experience, he suggests, “they’ll spoil it for everyone else”.
As for him, he is already in touch with the team at The Bio-Leadership Project about future weekends away — although perhaps in a camper van next time round.
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