Assessing the Climate Impact of Global Employee Engagement

Over the past year, we at Dazzle have focused our efforts on reducing our carbon emissions and understanding how we can make the greatest impact. From the start it was clear that the majority of our emissions come not from our daily operations, but from the projects we deliver to our customers. However, we needed a clearer picture of where exactly those emissions were generated in order to take meaningful action. That’s why we set out to study one of our projects in detail.

Huhtamäki, a global leader in sustainable packaging, gave us the perfect case study: the Huhtamäki Strategy Dialogue 2023 (SD23), a global initiative to bring the company’s renewed 2030 strategy to life. Using Dazzle’s dialogical change method, employees in 27 countries joined small-group discussions that were facilitated by dialogue tools designed to connect Huhtamäki’s strategy with everyday work.

We measured SD23’s carbon emissions with three goals in mind: forming a baseline for future emission reductions, comparing the climate impact of face-to-face and virtual small-group dialogues, and identifying where the biggest improvements could be made. By summer 2024, 15,000 employees had taken part in this massive engagement effort, providing a rich source of data for analysis.

A full report detailing the project, calculation methods, and results is available in both English and Finnish. Here below are some key findings about results, methods, and most relevant emission reduction targets.

Face-to-face vs. virtual emissions

It’s easy to assume that a virtual meeting via Teams or a similar platform is always the more sustainable choice over gathering around printed dialogue tools. Indeed in SD23, transporting printed dialogue tools created most of the emissions — about 64 percent of the total footprint.

However, when we looked at average emissions per small-group dialogue, the difference between the two formats almost disappeared. A face-to-face dialogue produced 1.5 kilograms of CO₂e, and a virtual one 1.3 kilograms. Geography played the biggest role: local energy sources and transport distances coupled with package weights shaped the results. In some countries, virtual sessions even caused higher emissions than in-person ones.

The conclusion was that there’s no single “greenest” format: sustainability depends on context. In this case, participants did not need to travel for face-to-face sessions, keeping their footprint small.

Understanding digital emissions

Measuring the emissions of digital work is complex. The climate impact of a one-hour Teams meeting depends on where it happens, the devices used, server efficiency, how data moves across the internet, and so on.

For SD23, we used Grant Faber’s Framework to estimate emissions from virtual conferences and went through a vast amount of global data sources to estimate the project’s ICT emissions. Still, big uncertainties remain, especially around how much energy it takes to move data online. Research results vary widely and finding trustworthy sources for calculation was difficult. Therefore the resulting figures should be seen as best estimates rather than exact numbers (as per usual for carbon accounting).

The study gave us a solid baseline and highlights that the true climate cost of digital collaboration is still not yet fully understood.

Reducing emissions

The biggest opportunity for reduction lies in logistics. Shipping printed dialogue tools worldwide by air accounted for roughly two-thirds of total emissions.

Future projects can reduce this dramatically. By using DHL’s GoGreen Plus program, which replaces part of aviation fuel with sustainable biofuel, freight emissions could drop by up to 70 percent, nearly halving the total footprint of SD23. Dazzle became a GoGreen Plus partner in 2024 and has committed to the highest possible reduction target in its deliveries.

Impact beyond emissions

While emissions matter, so does human impact. The Strategy Dialogue reached 15,000 people worldwide and earned a satisfaction score of 4.58 out of 5. Participants said they gained a deeper understanding of Huhtamäki’s 2030 strategy and found practical ways to connect it to their work, including ways to make it more sustainable.

True change happens through both emotional and rational understanding and in-person dialogue remains the most powerful way to spark it. When people sit together, they think more deeply, listen more carefully, and build stronger shared understanding. Virtual sessions add flexibility and reach, but for real insight and lasting behavioral change, nothing compares to live conversation.

What’s next

By measuring the climate impact of global engagement, we can continue improving our operations and refining the balance between human and environmental impact. The next step is calculating Dazzle’s full 2024 footprint, which is underway and we aim to have finished by the end of 2025.