Cemex Case Study

Cemex has been on this journey to center climate action, circularity and responsible natural resource management since the 1990s. In fact, Cemex has been publishing sustainability reports since 1997 to provide an overview of the company’s strategy and annual performance in areas such as environmental performance, community engagement, and employee health and safety.

Along the way, they earned awards for their conservation projects, were recognized for their exemplary transparency, and linked the Executive Variable Compensation program to progress carbon reduction goals. Many of these initiatives are part of Future in Action, “a program focused on achieving sustainable excellence through climate action, circularity, and natural resource management with the primary objective of becoming a net-zero CO2 company.”

Cemex recognized that achieving its global climate action goals requires ensuring that sustainability is at the core of its operations. With this strategy in mind, Cemex sought a solution to involve employees in ways that better connect individuals’ habits to company-wide sustainability goals. Employing approximately 44,000 people globally, the challenge was delivering relevant micro-learning content that was culturally aligned with each of their regions.

2023

Customer Since

44,000

Employees Globally

Global

Location

Cement

Industry

A Global View

The Key to a Successful Launch

Internal surveys showed that Cemex employees were generally motivated by the company’s commitment to climate action. Yet employees felt disconnected from those goals. They weren’t sure what they could do to make a difference or contribute to progress on those goals.

Cemex’s Human Resources Culture & Change Management department had a solution in mind: Integrate personal habits into the company’s climate action goals and ambitions. To bring this idea to life, Cemex selected JouleBug to design a white-label app–Cemex Always in Action–to deliver microlearning in simple, brand-aligned, easy-to-follow hands-on actions. They aimed to engage 5,000 office employees over 12 months of programming.

The app launched globally in February 2023 with an Energy Saving in the Workplace challenge. The nearly month-long challenge had 1058 participants and featured only four actions: Avoid the Use of Elevators, Turn Off the Monitor, Turn Off the Lights, and Office Power Down.

This first global challenge resulted in 2,581 logs and 5,789 kg CO2 savings. By the end of March 2023, the app had a little over 1,400 registered participants, 28% toward the target goal of 5,000. Compared to JouleBug’s historical records, Cemex had one of the most successful white-label rollouts. How?

Three key factors yielded a successful launch:

Leadership was bought in before the global release

Investment in marketing and communication material

Identified, trained and enabled regional sustainability champions

Leadership Buy-In

Always in Action was first introduced at an annual event for global Cemex leaders. The announcement was a video showcasing how the app instigates competitive spirit and generates collaboration. This was a pivotal moment for the HR Culture & Change Management team because only priority projects were presented at this event.

The announcement concluded with a call to action for leaders to download the app and log actions. By getting leadership bought-in with first-hand experience, the HR Culture & Change Management was able to:

Set expectations with leaders early and establish rapport for presenting findings and updates
Seed the in-app community with logged actions and generated content from leaders, inspiring employees to participate

Employees want to know that leaders go beyond the talk. Always in Action provides tangible, real-time evidence that leadership is acting, not just talking.

Marketing & Communications

As demonstrated by decades of corporate accolades, industry partnerships, and a conservation track record, sustainability is a core pillar for Cemex. Yet corporate action only sometimes translates to individual action, and vice versa. HR Culture & Change Management’s primary goal is communicating, educating, and motivating people to make sustainable life changes alongside corporate strategy.

To accomplish this effectively, HR Culture & Change Management developed various marketing materials to display digitally around the office or use in internal channels. Highlight of the material:

Regional champions localized translated content to ensure relevance and relatedness (this includes in-app content)
Marketing content included a mix of videos, animated GIFs, social style graphics, and copy for text-based comms channels
Featured how-to tips for using the app, showcasing available actions, calling out incentives for winning a challenge

The app is quite intuitive, the key is consistency and recording actions that, altough they may seem small, when added together register a great impact on sustainability.

Nestor Qunitero

Cemex Always in Action Participant

Empowering Regional Champions

From the start of the project, the HR Culture & Change Management team planned to involve and enable regional green champions to manage Always in Action experiences. Green champions are the cultural subject matter experts. With first-hand knowledge of the country and office culture, they know best how to motivate their employees.

Green champions (community admins) are empowered to own and deploy regional-specific challenges with the Always in Action app. Community Admins all receive training on creating challenges in the Admin Dashboard–selecting culturally relevant actions, updating action content, adding prizes, setting up notifications, and tracking results throughout a challenge.

Additionally, Community Admins can access a toolkit with marketing materials, FAQs, corporate calendar for key events, and other valuable resources. By activating regional green champions, the Cemex corporate team has removed a bottleneck and opened the gates to allow teams to do more good in their part of the world.

20

Actions

13

Communities

36

Challenges

Change Management Takes Time, Collaboration & Creativity

At the time of publishing, the Cemex Always in Action app had 3,046 registered participants, approximately 61% of the 5,000 participants goal.

Here’s a reminder of the power of collective action:

Small actions, done by many, have a significant impact! And as you’ll see in the results section, quantitative data alone doesn’t tell the whole story.

Now, let’s examine the tactics Cemex is using to involve more participants, generate new excitement, and strengthen the connection between individual action and corporate strategy.

Leveraging Communities Feature

Cultural relevance always matters. This is especially true for Cemex, which has 44,000 employees across Mexico, the USA, EMEA, and SCAC. Each region and country has its own customs, habits, and significant holidays. So, to authentically connect with and inspire employees, Cemex created regional communities (or sub-groups) within the app.

Each community has Community Admins (the green champions mentioned earlier). Community Admins manage challenges, update actions with region-specific messaging and resources, and select attractive incentives. This decentralized approach allows authenticity in delivering sustainability education and managing behavior change. It also provides another level of friendly competition and insights for benchmarking engagement with corporate climate action initiatives.

Developing New Content and Features

In their search for the right solution, Cemex sought a collaborative partner willing to explore this space with them. JouleBug was a natural fit. Our two companies thrive in collaboration, co-creation, and co-designing. For this project, JouleBug guided Cemex through developing brand-aligned custom actions that weren’t available.

Content development for new actions included messaging, recommended log limits, suggested resources, and impact calculations. JouleBug also regularly recommends ways to modify existing actions or connects Cemex to other clients for brainstorming.

That collaboration extends beyond the content to feature development for the Admin Dashboard and the mobile apps. Cemex inspired and was the first to test the personal Carbon Footprint Calculator. Similarly, Cemex improved the admin experience with regular feedback on how the platform expedites or slows down their work. Together, we’re able to evolve the software in ways that benefit all other customers and app users.

1

Custom Theme

9

Custom Categories

15

Custom Actions

Customizing Reports

As the saying goes, you cannot change what you cannot measure. Cemex took that to heart and worked with JouleBug to develop custom reports to track:

Engagement rate (actions logged, photos, comments)
Adoption (frequency of app use)

This data is then filtered and measured by country/region. This helps HR Culture & Change Management track levels of engagement per region, the percentage each region contributes to overall employee engagement, and identify more green champions. These reports are shared with leadership and Community Admins for visibility and decision-making.

This is another example of collaboration at play for the benefit of many.

Changes at Cemex Since Implementing

Culture Shift

CEMEX’s original goal was to help employees adopt more sustainable behaviors in their daily lives at the office and at home. This goal was reached after only a year and a half. Now, there’s a visible cultural shift and a normalization of sustainability practices at the office. Employees have significantly reduced their use of plastic water bottles, they’re turning the lights off in unoccupied conference rooms, and more people are taking the stairs instead of elevators, all contributing to a more mindful office culture.

Influencer Marketing

CEMEX’s office-wide communication about the Always in Action app through multiple channels, including display monitors, has led to a noticeable change in habits, even among people not using the app. Participants were motivated by seeing how small actions contribute to significant impact reduction. This has not only influenced their own habits, but also inspired many of them to share this knowledge with family members and friends, creating a ripple effect of changing habits beyond the employee base.

Climate Plus

Though the Always in Action app promotes  eco-habits and awareness of corporate sustainability goals, it is well-positioned to introduce related initiatives beyond climate action. With access to a library of over 300 actions, CEMEX can offer various content to participants, including fitness, nutrition, volunteering, and inclusion activities. This extra content gives regional ambassadors and community admins the flexibility to organize challenges that cater to individuals who may be less inclined to participate in sustainability-focused micro-learnings.

CEMEX: Uniting Global Workforce for Climate Action