The social value of conservation initiatives in the workplace

The success of conservation efforts largely depends on broad-based public support. However, the growing separation between people and elements of nature, due to global processes such as urbanization, may decrease individual connection with nature and public support for conservation. Encouraging interactions between people and nature becomes, therefore, of major importance. As people spend most of the daily time at work, enhancing the interaction between people and biodiversity in their work places could sustainably benefit people and conservation directly (protecting biodiversity) and indirectly (via people's actions). Yet, to date, little effort has been made to explore biodiversity in workplaces and its influence on the knowledge, perception and behavior of employees. In this study, we explored how top-down biodiversity-friendly initiatives (management of the outdoor areas, communication campaign with signs, exhibitions of nature photography) at work (power plant in rural France) can influence employees’ biodiversity-related knowledge, attitudes and behaviors, using a before-after survey. We showed that the influence of such initiatives in the workplace can have small but significant impacts on awareness and behavior of employees in their private everyday life. By implementing new settings in the everyday life of the employees, the studied company (the French electricity company EDF) may have defined new social norms in the workplace. Thus conserving biodiversity in workplaces may mutually benefit conservation directly through preserving local biodiversity and indirectly by influencing and strengthening people's relationship to it.