Green-Shout About Everything, Not Just the Planet

Green-Shout About Everything, Not Just the Planet

There's a movement building around how businesses talk about their sustainability work, and it's a good one.

Earlier this year, B Lab and Creatives for Climate launched the GreenSHOUTING Guide, a free framework built to help organisations communicate their sustainability progress with confidence, credibility and integrity. It's a direct response to something a lot of purpose-led businesses will recognise. For years the fear of being accused of greenwashing pushed companies the other way, into greenhushing, where genuine progress gets kept quiet because nobody wants to overclaim and get caught out. The guide's argument is simple: the choice isn't between perfect communication and silence. It's between leading your own story and abandoning it.

I think that's exactly right. And I want to take it one step further.

Greenhushing isn't just a sustainability problem

The instinct to stay quiet about good work doesn't stop at the environment.

The same thing happens with culture. Organisations doing real, meaningful work on inclusion, mental health, wellbeing and talent very often say nothing about it. Not because it isn't good, but because they're not confident enough in how it's evidenced to talk about it out loud. It feels safer to keep it internal than to put it into the world and invite scrutiny.

So you end up with the culture equivalent of greenhushing. Strong work, done quietly, that nobody outside the organisation ever hears about. The wellbeing programme that's genuinely changing how people feel at work. The inclusion progress that took real effort. The mental health provision that goes well beyond an EAP and a poster. All of it under the radar, because the confidence to talk about it isn't there.

That's a shame, and it's a missed opportunity. Because the same confidence, transparency and integrity that greenshouting asks for on sustainability is exactly what your people work deserves too.

Why the confidence to talk about it matters

This isn't about shouting for the sake of it, or performing values you don't hold. Greenshouting only works because it's grounded in evidence, honest about the gaps, and clear about what's actually happening. The same has to be true for culture.

But when it's done properly, talking openly about this work does something powerful. It gives the next generation of talent a real sense of who you are as an organisation and why they'd want to be part of it. People choosing where to work want to understand what a company stands for, and they can tell the difference between a values statement and a company that can actually show its workings.

And there's a peer-to-peer effect that matters just as much. When organisations have the confidence to talk honestly about what they're doing, not just on wellbeing, but on EDI, on mental health, on the harder and less comfortable areas, other organisations learn from it. Progress shared openly moves everyone forward. Progress kept quiet helps no one. That kind of learning between peers is genuinely one of the most valuable things in this whole space, and it only happens when people are confident enough to speak up.

"The best thing we can do is grow organisations that have the confidence to talk about the great work they're doing, and not just on mental health and wellbeing, but on EDI too. Its often harder stuff to talk about, and it's exactly where it matters most. So much of the value in this space comes from peer-to-peer learning, from one organisation seeing what another has done and taking the confidence to do it themselves. You only get that when people feel able to share openly. Greenshouting has given sustainability that permission. Our job is to give the whole of culture the same."
— James Pravato, CEO @ Includability

Where the Cultural Roadmap fits

This is what makes the Cultural Roadmap genuinely different, and it's the part I keep coming back to.

Most frameworks help you get confident about one thing. Greenshouting is about sustainability communication, and it does that brilliantly. But a Cultural Roadmap gives you that same confidence, transparency and integrity across your whole organisation, not a single slice of it.

We review across six pillars: Diversity and Inclusion, Mental Health, Wellbeing, Sustainability and Impact, Talent Management, and Leadership and Governance. So it doesn't only help you speak well about your environmental work. It gives you the evidence base to talk with the same confidence about your JEDI requirements, your inclusion and diversity work, your mental health provision, your wellbeing, all of it, held to the same standard and backed by the same rigour.

That's the point. You can't green-shout with integrity if you can't evidence what you're saying. And you can't talk confidently about your culture if it's a scattering of separate initiatives that were never joined up. The Cultural Roadmap gives you both: the joined-up view of what's actually working across every pillar, and the evidence that lets you talk about it honestly, without overclaiming and without staying silent.

For B Corps in particular, that includes your JEDI position under the new V2 standards. The roadmap maps where you are against the requirements, names the gaps clearly, and sequences the work, which means when you do talk about your inclusion progress publicly, it stands on evidence rather than intention.

Why Includability is built for this

Plenty of people can help you communicate one part of your impact well. What makes Includability different is that we do it across all six pillars, not one.

We're not a consultancy and we're not a certification. We're a structured, expert-led system, with a genuine community of Committed Employers behind it, all learning from each other. That community is where the peer-to-peer learning actually happens: real organisations, sharing what's worked and what hasn't, building the collective confidence to talk openly about this work.

That combination, the cross-pillar roadmap and the community around it, is what makes us the right partner to help you find your voice on the whole of your culture, not just the green bit.

The honest version

Greenshouting got one thing exactly right. Staying quiet about good work doesn't protect you. It just leaves the space empty for someone else to fill.

The same is true for everything else you're doing on your people and your culture. If it's real, if you can evidence it, and if you're honest about where the gaps still are, then you should have the confidence to talk about it. Not to perform, but because sharing it moves the whole sector forward, and because the best talent is looking for exactly that kind of honesty.

That's what the Cultural Roadmap is built to give you. The evidence to speak confidently about all of it, and a community to share it with.

If that's something you'd like to be able to do, it's exactly the kind of thing we'd be glad to talk through.

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Includability works with over 100 Committed Employers and partners to build inclusive, sustainable and mentally healthy workplaces. We're not consultancy and we're not certification. We're a structured, expert-led system that moves you from good intentions to clear strategy. To start your Cultural Roadmap, become a Committed Employer or get in touch.