Recognize and value employees while also engaging them in the preservation of the environment

Description

Context

Paris Habitat has 2959 employees, including 1200 building caretakers spread throughout the Greater Paris Regional Area and its
suburbs. Twice, in 2012 and 2014, Paris Habitat organised an exhibition of its employees’ artistic productions, “Talents of Paris Habitat”.
The initial objective was to promote their creativity and to encourage encounters between employees scattered throughout Paris or nearby towns, and sometimes with those isolated such as the building care takers.

The latest edition that began with the COP 21 at the end of 2015 lasted until July 2016 focused on the environment in line with the global issues of the climate conference, the objectives of the city of Paris, its ‘zero’ waste ambition, targets for housing agencies to develop urban nature projects, to preserve biodiversity, and incite Parisians to re plant their environment, as well as other issues internal to the Agency: Paris Habitat updates its environmental charter and commits to a circular economy approach within its strategic project

Issues tackled

The recurring project “Talents of Paris Habitat” aims to pay tribute to artistic talent and improve relationships between employees.
It brings together employees and organisations that do not usually work together. In 2016 objective of the initiative was to raise
employee awareness about environment preservation from the perspective of consumer behaviour. It puts forward values related to
the impact of waste management on state of the environment and well-being of future generations; the importance of improving
biodiversity, quality of the air, water in cities and value added of these investments in terms of health and the quality of life overall. This is increasingly important in a densely populated city like Paris.

Actors involved

• Paris Habitat

Actions carried out

• Creation of a A Dedicated website
• The Corporate intranet
• A Tutorial on the making of vertical garden walls was recorded to enable the participants as well as those having not participated in the workshops, to make them by themselves
• Information flyers and posters
• Organisation of an exhibition

Results

▶ Committed and flexible like-minded partners and associations
▶ A global project and a variety of awareness raising methods and actions
▶ The distribution of teaching tools (mugs, bottles) reusable at the company, to help change behaviour. led to the desired results, including:
▶ Raised awareness of the environmental impact of waste and plants, exemplifying how everyone can act at their own level while expressing their creativity.
▶ Development of cohesion between collaborators and a corporate culture based on individual and collective environmental responsibility.
▶ An explanation of the organisation’s economic responsibility towards
▶ Setting up a local alternative circuit: partnership with associations recovering waste, donation of material to a firm of committed innovative architects, who created a circular
pavilion that was exposed on the square in front of the Paris City Hall during the COP21, and who will use them to construct a renowned Parisian cultural place.
▶ 600 plastic cups collected, approximately 200 participants at the workshops and visitors, 70 individual and collective works were carried out.

Why it works

The innovation lies in the global dimension and the meaning given to the project in relation to the preservation of the environment, whilst
developing the talents and creativity of employees; the diversity of actions allows anyone to be involved in the way he/she prefers.

Scale

local