CASE STUDY
Turning Passion into Progress - A Cross-Team Sustainability Journey
Turning a supplier sustainability compliance requirement into a culture shift and business advantage
One Workplace, founded in 1925 as a family bookstore, is now North America's largest dealership for commercial furnishings, architectural products, technology, and services. They provide integrated interior solutions—design, furniture, tech, and construction—to create customized spaces for corporate, healthcare, education, and senior living markets, aiming to transform work environments and foster culture.
“We have been partners with RyeStrategy for almost four years focusing on our carbon emissions calculations, and it’s been a great journey. It’s helped increase employee engagement around sustainability and really get people more involved.”
Dr. Joanna Thompson, Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, One Workplace
From Passion to Partnership
Sustainability at One Workplace didn’t start in the boardroom, it began with passionate employees. Designers and staff across the Santa Clara headquarters and regional offices in California and Washington were already looking for ways to reduce waste, rethink materials, and make a positive environmental impact. But while the passion was there, the structure and data to support a company-wide sustainability initiative were missing.
Without clear metrics, even the most committed teams found it challenging to demonstrate impact or win leadership buy-in. Efforts were fragmented, progress was hard to quantify, and the company lacked a unifying framework to turn grassroots enthusiasm into measurable results.
One Workplace's partnership with RyeStrategy, initiated after the Salesforce Accelerator Program, marked a significant shift. This collaboration provided One Workplace with dependable GHG emissions data, enabling them to confidently measure their carbon footprint. The resulting insights were instrumental, guiding decisions, shaping priorities, and prompting leadership to invest in a more unified approach.
Building a Culture of Engagement
One of the most visible outcomes was the creation of a 16-person ESG advisory board. This cross-functional group brought together individuals from different departments and offices, many of whom had never collaborated before, to align on a shared mission. Today, the ESG advisory board has grown into a central hub for sustainability engagement, with 20% actively participating in ESG initiatives. This cross-functional involvement has helped embed sustainability into everyday decision-making, whether in project design, operations, or client conversations. “Employees who probably would have never collaborated in their day-to-day work bonded over their shared passion for sustainability and a vision of how our business could positively impact our community and the future of our planet,” Dr. Joanna Thompson, Director of DEI at One Workplace, adds in.
“We’ve been able to get buy-in from executive leadership and other leaders across the organization. We even created an ESG advisory team with members from both our California and Washington offices.”
Joanna Thompson, One Workplace
Externally, the company’s progress is validated by its most recent EcoVadis assessment. With RyeStrategy’s support, One Workplace achieved a score of 53/100, an increase of 5 points over two years, earning a “Committed” rating and placing in the 43rd percentile. Environmental performance alone improved by 8 points, progress that leadership attributes to having structured carbon emissions reduction data at their fingertips.
One Workplace 2025 Committed Sustainability Rating Badge
2024 Earth Day beach cleanup with One Workplace San Francisco Team
Beyond Measurement and Recognition
One Workplace
Sustainability Impact at a Glance
EcoVadis Score: 53/100 (up 5 points in 2 years, “Committed” rating, 43rd percentile)
Environment: +8 points
Labor & Human Rights: +1 point
Ethics: +3 points
Sustainable Procurement: +8 points
Vendor Engagement: 41% response rate to annual ESG & DEI vendor survey (2022–2024)
70% of respondents are small businesses
38% have one or more diversity classifications
Employee Education: 80% of design team completed One Planet sustainability training (2024)
Armed with reliable data and a unified strategy, One Workplace has seen ripple effects far beyond tracking and reducing their carbon footprint. Employees at every level have become engaged advocates for sustainability, and the ESG advisory board provides structure to their passion. What began as grassroots energy has grown into a formal, cross-functional engine for climate action, shaping everything from warehouse operations to workplace experience initiatives.
Expanding Impact, Inside and Out
That cultural shift has also become a differentiator in the talent market. The company now highlights its ESG team and sustainability initiatives during hiring conversations, with candidates consistently responding positively. The talent team notes that these efforts help One Workplace stand out as an employer of choice, and the careers page is being revamped to showcase this commitment even more directly. The impact is visible externally as well.
The ESG advisory board has helped extend sustainability into the supply chain and employee education. Since 2022, the team has coordinated an annual ESG & DEI vendor survey, achieving a 41% response rate. The results provide actionable insights: 70% of responding vendors are small businesses, and 38% hold one or more diversity classification, information now used by teams to guide more sustainable and inclusive project decisions.
Internally, the launch of One Planet, a sustainability education program for designers, has embedded climate literacy directly into client-facing work. By 2024, 80% of the design team had completed the program, ensuring that sustainable thinking is part of the design process from the start.
Together, these outcomes underscore how reliable carbon accounting, paired with employee passion, can drive both cultural and operational change, in addition to positive environmental impact. Driven by passion and powered by collaboration, One Workplace's commitment to sustainability has evolved beyond a mere initiative, anchored by reliable data from RyeStrategy.
“Having a Sustainability Committee is the game changer. It’s not just one person or one team, it's a small group of us, but we can lean on each other, share information, and keep moving forward.”
Joanna Thompson, One Workplace
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