SUSTAINABILITY REPRESENTATIVE NETWORKMEETING

Tuesday 27 2013 10.00am-1.00pm

Zofrea Room - Level 3, Campus Hub (Building C10A)

MINUTES

Present:Hiranya Anderson,Suzane Azzi, Belinda Bean,Christine Borbely, Cindy Cunningham, Leanne Denby,Linda Evans Camilla Gordon James Hazelton Pavle Jeric Carlene Kirvan,Alana Mailey, Kath McLachlan, Andy McNeill, Adam Mujaj, Samantha Newton, Rebecca Ohanessian, Gillian Pak, Zubeda Raihman Janet Robertson, Les Robinson (Enabling Change),Phyllis Sakinofsky, Sumit Salaria, Sarah Jo Steinhoff, Clare Wade, Meghan Woods.

  1. Welcome

Cindy welcomed and introduced Les Robinson from Enabling Change. Les is an experienced and knowledgeable change practitioner who has worked with many organisations in developing effective change programs for sustainability.

  1. ‘Making Change Happen – The Wacky Effect’ - Les Robinson from Enabling Change

Les provided an overview on ‘change’ and how it occurs by providing a few examples. Les emphasised that nothing happens without conversation. Conversation, or at least interaction, carries change along social networks. It connects people, determines social norms, and it's how societies and groups make choices. Conversation is the key to culture change, since a group’s culture is the sum of its conversations.

Conversation is also how people decide what is true. What people say about your project or product determines whether their peers believe it is useful, credible and offers advantages over what they do now. When people experience a new behaviour or product that really works in their lives, they talk about it, creating more buzz, increasing other peoples’ desire, lowering their fears, and so creating a virtuous circle, which explains why some products and behaviours take off and spread throughout social systems.The first rule is “no buzz, no change”. Successful change projects give people reasons and opportunities to interact and discuss new products or behaviours.

Les also emphasised that having an element of surprise and being ‘off message’ when designing projects that generate change.

Rapid Project Generator Exercise

Les described the ‘rapid project generator’ process that allows a group to rapidly construct a staff engagement project. SRN members broke into groups to form a “brains trust” and each group were asked to come up with a new behaviour action that they want people to adopt.

The following behaviour focus questions listed below were put forward. After coming up with initial ideas during the individual and group brainstorming, SRN members were then asked to identify some wacky ideas in relation to the focus question.

Each person was distributed with 10 points to distribute between the ideas raised by the group, which they think would have the biggest impact on the behaviour and be realistically achievable. The following points under each focus question were considered the most popular amongst the groups:

Focus Question

What would increase the use of water refill stations across campus?

  • Change look of existing refill stations
  • Free Macquarie University bottles with a map of water stations
  • Have a mascot (eg Macwater) wearing a blue water bottle costume
  • Place blue footprints across campus leading to refill stations
  • Make all drink water stations out of order – place a map displaying locations of refill stations

Focus Question

What can we do to encourage staff to take volunteering leave?

  • Close the office and have a volunteering day
  • Staff run a volunteering stall at Open day
  • Approve leave for fixed term and casuals
  • Bring charities onto campus to promote to staff what they can get involved in

Focus Question

How can we make people walk more?

  • Add a mandatory walking component to assignments
  • Days in lieu for distance walked
  • Outside every building have dogs for walking
  • Frequent fake alarms going off in buildings

Focus Question

What can we do to encourage staff to take volunteering leave?

  • Do a lunch break volunteering activity – start off small eg knitting jumpers/blankets for charity
  • Marketing campaign with paid coordinators to assist staff
  • Managers required to take leave to lead by example – they are delegated a volunteering activity via spinning a wheel of fortune which has different volunteering activities
  • Have staff share their experiences at Department meetings to showcase their volunteering

A copy of Les Robinson’s workshop handout “Changeology of Workplaces” can be viewed as a separate attachment under the Minutes on the Sustainability website.

  1. Next SRN Meeting:December 2013 (date to be confirmed)

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