Gamifying sustainability: delivering worker engagement and environmental impact
Raynor Foods, the 2023 British Sandwich Association Manufacturer of the Year, and the largest supplier of sandwiches to the NHS, have always been a leader in sustainability. In 2009 they pioneered the carbon footprinting of sandwich products, and they have an extensive track record of sustainable innovation delivering projects, including eliminating non-biodegradable plastics and creating the IntenseTM tomato, which cut waste and increased product life.
To maintain this position and push the boundaries of sustainability, Raynor Foods saw an opportunity to tackle arguably their biggest challenge to date — how to motivate everyone in the company, from the shop floor upwards, to work towards improving its sustainability performance. To achieve this, Raynor Foods, in collaboration with a consortium made up of the Institute for Manufacturing (IfM), the University of Lincoln and Software Imaging, came up with a highly innovative high-tech response linking employee recognition and rewards to measurable KPIs in sustainability performance — known as the S3 Project.
The aim of the S3 Project is to create a digital twin factory using state-of-the-art technology to track carbon emissions in food manufacturing. By incorporating aspects of gamification to motivate the workforce, and real-time carbon monitoring, the aim is to demonstrate carbon reductions. The project has three main elements: smart people, smart processes and smart factory.
Smart factory and smart processes
The foundations of the S3 project have already been established, with the University of Lincoln leading much of the work. They analysed what improvements were needed in terms of CO2 reduction, discovered what digital tools would be needed to accomplish these reductions, and were then involved in developing and deploying these tools. These included a highly sophisticated set of sensors connected to game links attached to pieces of equipment or worn by employees.
One of the most impressive pieces of technology is the Ultra-Wide Band Mesh, developed by Software Imaging. It is effectively an invisible mesh that covers the entire enterprise and can locate a digital link within 5 to 10 cm. “It is effectively the backbone of our whole project,” says Tom Hollands, Innovation and Technical Director at Raynor Foods.
“You can associate links with a piece of equipment, or to people, or to processes. And because we flooded the whole area, and it’s got a very granular accuracy, you can do some fantastic things with the technology that we’re only starting to discover now. You can add the links to scaled waste bins, which allow you to associate the amount of waste with a process. You could also add links to doors on room-sized fridges and freezers to highlight if they are open,” says Tom.
“These links enable you to geolocate people to a process. If you measure the process from a CO2 emissions performance perspective, you can assign performance to individuals and teams who work in that area, even if they only work in the area for 30 minutes.”
Because the groundwork was done by the consortium in terms of identifying technology aligned to business and sustainability needs, some impressive results are already becoming visible.
The S3 Consortium have already been able to track a saving of 38 tonnes of carbon emissions though smarter processes. “As a business there are great correlations between wasted effort, wasted time and higher emissions. Tackling overproduction, stock rotation processes and end-of-production waste were all key factors that led to the reduction,” says Tom.
But Raynor Foods want to go much further. “This is just a starting point, and we are expecting the savings to grow through gamification. We’re aiming to be net zero by 2030, which is a deliberately ambitious target. But it’s got to be because we’re running out of time, and if nobody starts moving the dial quite quickly, we’re all going to be in a really unpleasant place,” says Tom.
Smart people and gamification
The company knew that the only way to do this was to get the entire workforce on board.
“Because it’s only through an engaged workforce that we’re going to deliver these things. We want to make sustainability more relevant and personal to them. One area we hope to move the needle on is making the invisible — things like CO2 emissions — visible, to motivate staff to find ways to reduce waste they can’t necessarily see,” says Tom.
With the data in hand and an awareness of the changes that needed to be made, the challenge was to convey this information to the workforce in a way that would engage them on a personal level, and to encourage the behaviours and values that Raynor Foods want to live by as an organisation.
To this end, they approached the IfM, part of the University of Cambridge, who have been leading the development of a gamification programme to make improvements in sustainability. The system, which allows employees to earn points that transform into a variety of rewards and benefits, is the most advanced and innovative such system in the food industry.
“It’s an engagement and education tool that allows us to motivate and achieve behavioural change, while making the work fun and valuable for the employees” explains Ergün Güngör, Research Associate at the IfM.
Discovering motivating factors
For the system to work, Raynor Foods first needed to discover the rewards that would actually be meaningful to their workforce. This process involved Ergün interviewing 8–10 “Sustainability Ambassadors” appointed by the company. This enabled him to get a good idea of areas that were important to employees and then design a survey that was shared with the entire workforce. This covered a range of questions from what motivated employees to what worried them and how they would like to improve themselves.
“A flexible work–life balance was the top motivating factor, which came as a surprise to management because money had always seemed a prime concern when questions were asked on the shop floor,” says Ergün. “Personal development, a supportive working environment, recognition and appreciation, and challenging and meaningful work were other important factors.”
“Ergün has been brilliant in sitting down and doing interviews, workshops, walkabouts and gathering data to understand everyone’s individual motivations, and how the rewards can then recognise that,” says Tom.
“It’s not all about money. We’ve learnt that. It’s about achievement, recognition, development, and wanting more quality time with their families, such as having holidays or trips to the zoo paid for,” says Tom. Certain desires, such as dinner with the managing director, donations to charities and even English lessons have been particularly surprising.
Armed with this information, the team went into workshops with management to look at ideas for the reward and recognition systems, a process that entailed aligning budgets with the promises that could be made. Ideas that came out of the workshops included a dream prize raffle, which would make somebody’s dream come true, a company-wide factory celebration day, paid training and additional holidays.
Creating KPIs that deliver worker engagement and environmental impact
Employees can win the rewards in a variety of ways, including meeting KPIs, with performance monitored by digital game links that they wear around their necks. It was important that the game be fair, inclusive and positive in nature so they can never lose points. And at the most basic level they can gain them for simply coming to work on time.
Managers have emphasised how personal KPIs are linked to business KPIs, for instance energy use. “If we go into the warehouse or goods area, we incentivise people to keep the doors shut as long as possible because 80% of our energy is used in refrigeration and freezer systems,” says Tom. As a lot of energy is used in melting cheese for the company’s “croque top” products, KPIs are also linked to that particular team to encourage more efficient working practices.
Linking business and personal KPIs took on added significance during the project when Raynor Foods changed from being a family-owned business to an employee-owned trust. “We’re all colleagues now. We have monthly colleague forums, which include representatives from across the business, where we meet up and discuss how we can improve things,” explains Tom.
This greater agency within the company has also played into other ways that employees can win points, such as coming up with ideas that can help the organisation’s sustainability goals. If an idea is implemented, points are then awarded according to the percentage of CO2 emissions they save. Employees can also win points by investing in themselves by taking courses, including English language classes for non-native speakers to help them better integrate into the company.
Once the gamification aspect is fully operational, there will be a phone app that allows employees to log in and check their progress, CO2 savings and scores.
“My feeling is that once the gamification programme is fully deployed and people start getting recognised and rewarded, it’s going to seem like a very attractive thing to the whole workforce,” says Ergün.
A voyage of discovery
As Raynor Foods is a large organisation producing 80,000+ sandwiches a day, implementing a major organisational transformation was bound to present challenges.
“The biggest challenge for us is obviously taking this project within the live environment. It’s not a nice lab, where everything is done securely and nothing goes out at all. How do you control that?” says Thierry Batariere, Senior Innovation Project Manager at Raynor Foods.
Tom is also keen to highlight some of the challenges they initially faced around the use of the digital links, notably the negative associations with the “Big Brother” practice of monitoring employee performance. “We were very careful not to call them tags, and we received comments that ‘you tag prisoners and cattle, not colleagues’,” says Tom.
Staff had a number of other concerns ranging from “Does it emit harmful radiation?” to “Does it record sound?”.
“Lots of questions like this came bubbling up, and we’ve done our best to address each one of those queries in a reassuring way,” says Tom.
But despite the challenges, Tom and Thierry are already impressed with the project and are looking forward to the full gamification process being implemented.
They’re also hoping the project will have an impact outside the workplace. Having realised that family was such an important motivating factor for the Raynor Foods workforce, Ergün took steps to emphasise how issues such as climate change could affect them personally and how adopting sustainable practices in their day-to-day lives could mitigate that.
Turning carbon champions on the shop floor into carbon champions at home can only make everyone involved a winner.
Becoming a “National Demonstrator”
Raynor Foods are hoping to become a “National Demonstrator”, highlighting how others could use the combination of smart people, smart factories and smart practices to tackle their own sustainability goals.
“We have to be a microcosm of where the industry needs to be, because we can’t do it by ourselves,” says Tom. “We want to inspire people to follow us, showcasing how some of the technology we’re using can help engage the workforce.”
Webinar
On 26 September 2024 at 1pm (UK time) the IfM will be hosting a webinar about the S3 project. In the webinar, project leads from Consortium partners including Raynor Foods, the University of Lincoln, the Institute for Manufacturing, and Software Imaging will cover how the project is delivering real-time carbon monitoring and motivating the workforce through demonstrating carbon reductions.
About the consortium
Each member of the consortium played a vital role in the project, which was funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)
Raynor Foods
Raynor Foods are an established food manufacturing business in Chelmsford, UK. Their plant employs over 200 people, producing over 30 million food-to-go items a year, mainly sandwiches and wraps.
Project leads:
- Tom Æ Hollands, Innovation and Technical Director
- Thierry Batariere, Senior Innovation Project Manager
University of Cambridge Institute for Manufacturing
In the S3 project, Dr Güngör is developing a state-of-the-art gamification framework to increase employee motivation, deliver behavioural change, raise sustainability awareness, drive CO2e emissions and most importantly recognise everyone’s efforts in doing so.
Project leads:
- Professor Steve Evans, Principle Investigator, Centre for Industrial Sustainability
- Dr Ergün Güngör, Research Associate, Centre for Industrial Sustainability
University of Lincoln
Dr Martindale leads an innovative research group developing geo-spatial, digital twin and modelling applications that enable us to meet carbon zero targets
Project lead:
- Dr Wayne Martindale, Principal Investigator, National Centre for Food Manufacturing
Software Imaging
Software Imaging created the Ultra-Wide Band Mesh and some of the sensors. They are also helping to develop the gamification app, which will allow employees to log in and see how they are performing in the game. Software Imaging has been at the forefront of innovation and received four Queen’s Awards for Services to IT.
Project lead:
- Martin Bonner, Sales Director
