Assignment 4

Stack-It Green: Part Two

Making sure everyone has a seat at the table

As Stack-It moves forward with our corporate sustainability plan and goals, it is important that the company, as a whole, moves forward together. The only way to ensure that we can all take that step forward is to make certain that we meet certain accessibility standards. This is because, if we cannot give everyone a seat at the table, we—as an organization—will never reach our sustainability goals (or any goals for that matter). We understand the importance of making “new climate change policies [that] recognize” particular barriers or impediments of new policies for disabled persons (Dines, 2016). In the past, “many of the positive changes made to habits and lifestyle, changes that could contribute to minimising climate change and rehabilitating the environment, are difficult or impossible for disabled people to do” (Wright, 2020). This is why Stack-It has formed a Corporate Sustainability Committee that will oversee the creation of communication content in order to make certain that it is meeting accessibility standards.

Below are the three areas that we will be focusing on going forward:

1. All written communication will come with an accompanying video/multi-media component.

We understand that having information available in various formats allows a broader audience to engage with said information. For example, our eblasts series that we will be sending out to all staff will always be accompanied by a video. This video will include subtitles as well as someone signing in American Sign Language (ASL). The video will cover all components that are covered within the eblast itself.

As we have locations in different regions within North American, subtitles will also be available in French and Spanish. The understanding is to push out the message on diverse platforms and multiple formats. Not only will this make the message more accessible, but it will also offer more opportunities for the messages to be engaged with.

2. All company websites going forward will meet standard accessibility regulations

A large proponent of our digital marketing team is website maintenance and creation. As it is already in the marketing plan to rebuild all websites to meet our current best practices, an additional section has been included to make our websites meet Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 (Rallo, et. al., 2019). Some considerations will include:

  • Making certain all information can easily be picked up by a screen reader or braille terminal.
  • Ensuring a large enough colour contrast between background and foreground graphics.
  • Using legible topography (font size and style)
  • Inclusion of alternative text to accompany all unexplained or non-text elements

This will affect Stack-It Green’s promotional material as we will be building out a series of pages on Stack-It’s website outlining our corporate sustainability goals and actions. It will be another place where this information can be accessed by our employees as well as current or potential customers.

3. E-meets hosted by the Corporate Sustainability Committee

In an effort to provide an inclusive platform for our employees, Stack-It’s Corporate Sustainability Committee will put on a number of e-meets that are open to Stack-It employees. This will give everyone the opportunity to weigh in on any future corporate sustainability goals. We see this activity as providing a safe forum for staff to voice their concerns or suggestions for the best way forward. As we want to make certain that everyone has a space at the table, we believe that hearing from our staff will give each of us a better perspective on what barriers might exist to some sustainability initiatives (such as single-use plastic bans).

After each session, we will send out an anonymous survey to all staff. This way, if some members did not feel comfortable voicing their opinions, the survey will hopefully give them the opportunity to do so in a safe (anonymous) environment. Contact information will also be easily accessible so that staff can get in contact with members of the Corporate Sustainability Committee.

Moving forward together

In uncertain times, Stack-It believes that it is important that we go forward in unity. Corporate sustainability is something that we believe to be an important aspect of our organization, but only if it is something that is applicable to all members of our Stack-It community.

Please click the following link for a video explanation of all the above initiatives mentioned. For any further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Corporate Sustainability Committee. We are all in this together!

References

Dines, H. (2019). The climate revolution must be accessible – this fight belongs to disabled people too. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/15/climate-revolution-disabled-people-activism

Rallo, A., Forest, E., Juo, J., Boutilier, R., & Li, E. (2019). Access Ability 2: A practical handbook on accessible graphic design. Revised + Supersized Second Edition. The Association of Registered Graphic Designers.

Wright, E. (2020). Climate Change, Disability, and Eco-Ableism: Why we need to be inclusive to save the planet. UX Collective. https://uxdesign.cc/climate-change-disability-and-eco-ableism-why-we-need-to-be-inclusive-when-trying-to-save-the-88bb61e82e4e

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Stack-It Green: Part One

ecology, globe, concept-6513805.jpg
At the end of October, I submitted an assignment/potential proposal to a local (Canadian) company in the heavy equipment industry. I presented them with an opportunity to work on their corporate sustainability, which will, in turn, give them a competitive edge within the industry. Now, I would like to turn this communication piece around and present this same opportunity to employees within the company to encourage them to adopt waste reduction strategies (professionally and personally) that will align with the company’s corporate sustainability goals. This message will be presented in two parts. Part One will be an email blast (eblast) that will be disseminated to all staff within the company. Part Two will incorporate a combination of multi-media to make the communication piece more accessible to all members of the community. For the purposes of this post—and to maintain a level of privacy—I will be referring to the company as “Stack-It.”

Getting Stack-It employees on board the train

As Stack-It is a North America-wide company, with many locations across Canada and the United States, they have a diverse group of employees. This means that the messaging will be reaching a wide demographic of people. From service persons working in machine shops, to office-workers on the corporate side, messaging will need to factor in all working environments and communication levels.

Using principles adapted from Anne K. Armstrong, Marianne E. Krasny, and Jonathon P. Schuldt’s (2018) Communicating Climate Change, the “climate change outcomes [I] want to achieve” are to encourage action within the Stack-It company community (p. 4). For my messaging, I would like to focus more heavily on gain-framing as opposed to loss-framing (Hine et. al., 2016). This is because “if a person believes that climate change poses a serious threat to human society, including a direct personal threat, that person may experience the emotion of fear and demonstrate fearful attitudes,” which “might also result in a terror management response” that could reduce the chances of someone “engag[ing] in pro-environmental behavior” (Armstrong et. al., 2018, p. 27). This is why it is integral in this messaging to encourage our Stack-It audience with positive messaging that will promote “a strong sense of self-efficacy” that may result in them [Stack-It employees] “expending more effort in the face of obstacles like climate change” (Armstrong et. al., 2018, p. 28).

Eblasting it out of the station

The medium that I will be using—an eblast—is going to be created using ClickDimensions, which is a cloud-based marketing technology service. This will allow me to measure the success of this initial campaign. ClickDimensions offers analytics reporting services on each eblast sent that will record such stats as open rate and click rate (including unique—or new— clicks). This program also offers a heat map that will track what links were clicked on in the eblast versus what links were not clicked on (or clicked on the least). Using this medium will allow me to measure the success of this initiative for any such future initiatives in this campaign.

Another benefit of employing this method of communication is that it is heavily based on visuals over text. To have an appealing eblast usually means making the written communication as pithy and engaging as possible. This will hopefully appeal to a wider and more diverse audience who may favor images over text (and vice-versa). “Visual message framing is [also] a powerful communication strategy for influencing risk perceptions and issue engagement” that can be used to encourage our audience into action (Altinay, 2017, p. 294). We also have the ability to, with ease, change messaging to focus on more local factors (e.g. for employees operating out of a branch in Texas, use local framing). As Schroth et. al. (2014) says, “climate change becomes more salient by bringing relevant information down to the local level, putting it into a community context that people care about, using the local landscape to express climate issues, and engaging citizens in developing local solutions” (p. 417).

The local frame train

The intentions behind employing local framing methods is based on the understanding that “many studies have found that engaging the public in discussion and action on environmental issues requires creating meaningful messages that matter to people personally (Altinay, 2017, p. 294). The way to engage with people—in this case Stack-It employees—is to create local messaging that will “build on [their] existing attitudes toward” their local environment (Altinay, 2017, p. 294).

For the purposes of this first eblast, I will address all staff that work within Stack-It. This first blast will be an introduction to a series of eblasts entitled Stack-It Green where the company will provide staff with little snippets of education and activities that they can do at work or at home to reduce their environmental footprint.

Introducing Stack-It Green

References

Altinay, Z. (2017). Visual communication of climate change: Local framing and place attachment. Coastal Management 45(4), 293-309. https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2017.1327344

Armstrong, A. K., Krasney, M. E. & Schuldt, J. P. (2018). Establishing trust. Communicating climate change: A guide for educators. Cornell University Press. [ebook] https://cornellopen.org/9781501730795/communicating-climate-change/

Hine, W. D., Philips, W. J., Cooksey, R., Reser, J. P., Nunn, P., Marks, A. D. G., Loi, N. M., Watt, E. S. (2015). Preaching to different choirs: How to motivate dismissive, uncommited, and alarmed audineces to adapt to climate change. Global Enviornmental Change, 36, 1-11. https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2015.11.002

Schroth, O., Angel, J., Sheppard, S., Dulic, A. (2014). Visual climate change communication: From Iconography to Locally Framed 3D Visualization. Environmental Communication 8(4), 413-432. https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2014.906478

 

All images are curtsey of pixabay. 

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