Our NetZeroYou2 Programme

As part of our commitment to tackle climate change, we also seek to give our employees opportunities to take action themselves. In 2021, we launched our NetZeroYou2 Programme, which was created in close cooperation with our people. In line with Swiss Re’s net-zero ambitions, the programme aims to inspire our employees to adopt our motto: “Do our best, remove the rest”.

The “Do our best, …” component is based on a dedicated mobile app. It enables our employees to calculate their carbon footprint and offers quarterly “sprints” with various challenges, including informative quizzes and suggestions for practical climate actions. In just six months, a quarter of our global workforce calculated their carbon footprint and collectively recorded more than 126 000 climate actions.

To involve them in our efforts to “… remove the rest”, we offer our employees access to Swiss Re’s carbon certificate purchasing campaign, which includes impactful new carbon removal technologies (see “Our CO2NetZero Programme”). Employees can buy their own certificates directly through an internal platform or by completing a challenge in the app. In both cases, Swiss Re contributes additional certificates. In 2021, the programme generated a total of 1 022 tonnes of carbon certificates in this way.

Finally, we hosted our first-ever NetZero Day while the COP26 conference in Glasgow was taking place. Our event featured inspirational guest speakers and shared practical ideas for a less carbon-intensive lifestyle.

Before launching the NetZeroYou2 Programme in 2021, we had run our COYou2 Programme for 14 years, paying out a total of over 33 000 subsides to our employees for investments that helped them reduce their personal carbon footprints.