Green IT Awareness at Amer Sports: An Interview with Marie Daille

A year ago, we took part for the first time in the GreenTech Forum, a trade show dedicated to responsible digital (also known as green IT or sustainable IT). At this event, we met many companies looking for tools to raise their teams' awareness of the challenges of a more responsible digital transformation.

As this anniversary approaches, we chose to give a voice to the people we met, in more or less wacky ways (you will see why), and with whom we collaborated this year!

For this second interview, The Wokies sat down with Marie DAILLE, co-lead for a more responsible digital at Amer Sports (the sporting goods group behind many well-known brands such as Salomon, Wilson, Arc'teryx, Atomic, Peak Performance and Armada).

She shares her feedback after rolling out 2 sessions of the Serious Escape Game - Responsible Digital, alongside her partner in crime Maria (Sustainability IT Project Manager), who managed the setup.

Marie, when you talk about responsible digital at Amer Sports, what does it mean?

Our "responsible digital" approach at Amer Sports started in 2021, with a working group bringing together several people from our IT department, who were motivated but, at the time, at a loss when facing the topic. We asked ourselves a lot of questions about the order of magnitude of our IT department's impacts, and did not know how to bring the approach into the company. Our first goal was to "train" ourselves:

• What are we talking about?
• Why is this a topic for the company?
• What should we do?
• Who should we bring on board?

That is how we connected with the GreenIT collective and heard about the Fresque du Numérique (a collaborative workshop on the environmental impact of digital technology). We contacted its creators and organized two half-days for IT employees at the Annecy site. Afterwards, two of us trained as facilitators and we kept rolling out the workshop internally, beyond the IT department. But we quickly ran into difficulties filling the workshops (a 3-hour format) and extending them to the group's other sites (Austria, Germany, Poland, UK, etc.).

Alongside the workshops, we took advantage of the European Sustainable Development Week to have a stand at our Annecy site (Salomon) and present some of our tools:

• Fresque du Numérique;
• Books:

Voyage au bout d'un like / L'enfer Numérique (Guillaume Pitron)

Sobriété Numérique : les clés pour agir and Eco-conception Web : les 115 bonnes pratiques (Frédéric Bordage)

La Sobriété Editoriale : 50 bonnes pratiques pour éco-concevoir ses contenus web (Ferréole Lespinasse)

Sustainable IT Playbook for Technology Leaders (Niklas Sundberg)

• Measurement & maturity actions (following the GreenIT benchmark);
• our brand-new e-learning module (15 minutes of awareness, information and a quiz);
• the Serious Escape Game - Responsible Digital.

Speaking of the Serious Escape Game, can you tell us about our unusual first meeting at the GreenTech Forum and what motivated you to set up this format?

Our first contact with The Wokies happened at the GreenTech Forum in December 2022. I heard about the game during a round table, from one of the speakers (hi to Marie Joron from BPCE), and I remember taking a few notes: the name, the website and, above all, that participants had found the format very fun, combining cooperation with a little dose of competition. In the sports world, those are two values we like. On top of that, the game ran entirely online, was also available in English and... lasted 90 minutes! Plenty of lights went on in my head: this game could let us reach our off-site employees, even non-French speakers, in larger numbers at once, all in less than half a day? So I was intrigued and already imagining reaching a different audience, and thus completing our toolbox, which already included the Fresque du Numérique. I had also noted that the game's team was at the Forum, and I planned to go to their stand to find out more (so far, nothing really unusual, we admit).

But for lack of time, and a certain reluctance to approach a busy stand, it did not happen. Chance did its job well, though, because once the forum was over, I found myself face to face in the subway with its founders and their big information panels clogging the corridors. That is finally where I met Clément and Hélène, picked up more information and promised myself I would get back in touch to discuss the best way to test the game at Amer Sports. Things finally came together this summer, and we opted for a full-scale test with 50 participants over 2 sessions (one in French, one in English).

Great! So how did you handle communication and the rollout of the game within the company?

To find our participants, we decided to tap into our network, contacting people who had told us they were interested in responsible digital at the stand, or who had not been able to join a workshop (people not on site, such as those in the sales subsidiaries or other brands). In the end, we found about fifty players quite easily. Since we had presented the escape game not only as a fun way to discover why we talk about the topic and what to do, but also as an excellent way to strengthen team cohesion, some people even offered to form teams of four right away.

It was clear to everyone that we were asking them for a fun experience, a pilot that, if they liked it, could be rolled out on a larger scale.

What feedback did you get from users about their experience with the game?

Participant feedback was very positive! The keywords that came up most were "Fun" and "Collaboration". Many were facing these issues for the first time and were surprised by the stakes. Some also wanted to go back over the content, to better absorb the orders of magnitude, the consequences and the possible actions within the company.

And as an organizer and then a player, what did you particularly enjoy about this format?

As an organizer, I appreciated:

• how easy it was to manage registrations and logistics;
• the quality of the content: I found the same information and orders of magnitude that we were already communicating internally;
• how easy it is to deploy internationally, and outside our usual scope (subsidiaries, other teams...).

As a participant, I appreciated:

• The recap videos;
• The summary at the end of the game;
• The fun and collaborative aspect;
• The challenge between teams, which is motivating!

In the end, how did the Serious Game help the company progress toward its responsible digital goals?

Thanks to the Serious Escape Game, we were able to reach and raise awareness among 50 new employees who were out of reach across Europe (France, Great Britain, Belgium, Austria and Germany).

Through this activity, we were also able to communicate more easily about our action plan and grow our community of ambassadors on the topic.

How will your collaboration with The Wokies continue?

We have committed to new sessions, probably with around the same number of participants (~50 people) for 2024, this time with broader communication on our corporate social networks and intranet, to create some "buzz". As for other formats, we might be interested in adding video or post content to share with participants over the months to keep them engaged and help them remember the information shared during the game.

In a few words, to finish, how would you sum up this project for Amer Sports? Any message for those who would like to organize a Serious Escape Game in their companies?

We are very happy with our first experience with The Wokies' Serious Escape Game: everything clicked, from the organization to the flow, the content, the platform and the great support from Clément and Hélène. It is an effective and fun tool, which we have now added to our responsible digital "Toolbox" at Amer Sports. Over the coming years, we aim to gradually grow a solid community of aware and active employees. If that is your ambition too, don't hesitate and try the adventure with The Wokies: you will be well supported and delighted by the game's content.

So what are you waiting for to add this fun, educational tool on responsible digital to your awareness program? Let's talk!