Go Green: Sustainability Employee Engagement

Going Green Sustainability Employee Engagementwww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Let’s Talk About Why Generate Employee Buy In? How to Involve Employees? How to Keep it Going?www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Let’s First Understand the Employeeswww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

3 Sides of Employee Engagement The Rational Side: Employees’ The Emotional Side: The feeling of support the business’s goals, belonging, relationship, attachment, strategies, culture and values pride towards their work place The Green Team The Motivational Side: Employees’ willingness to go above and beyond their normal job responsibilities to make business successful Source: Towers Watsonhttp://www.greenbiz.com/blog/2011/09/06/why-employee-engagement-critical- sustaining-sustainabilitywww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

A recent study by Towers Watson looked at engagement levels across 50 global organizations and found that operating income in high-engagement companies improved 19.2 percent over a 12-month period. In low engagement companies it declined 32.7 percent.www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

• Another survey of more than 13,000 full-time U.S. workers in 2008 revealed that highly engaged employees are 26 percent more productive • Their companies earned 13 percent greater total returns to shareholders over a five-year period. • Engaged employees also took 20 percent fewer days off and tended to be more supportive of organizational change.www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Bring a New Attitudewww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Create your Green Story Start with attitude change! Green is not the in thing. It’s not a good thing to have. It’s innovation and presents economic opportunity. It’s needed! One Gallup study found that organizations with an engaged workforce have 2.6 times the earnings per share growth rate as organizations with a less engaged workforce.www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Employee sustainability engagement is the practice of promoting efficiency, resource conservation, and other green initiatives to motivate changes in staff behavior. From WalMart and the U.S. Federal Government to JC Penny and Intel, many organizations have undertaken employee sustainability initiatives in recent years.www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

“The trick is not to let any excitement around green go to waste” Andrew Winston, "Get (Your People) Engaged", Green Recoverywww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

How to Appeal to the Rational Side of Employees? • Share the Sustainability Vision: Create/Co-Create your company’s vision. This vision must include a mission statement and values, and there must be a sound strategy of how to stay on track with these goals. Employees want to know where they are going and how? Find ways to connect individuals to company-wide goals. • Create Code of Conduct: Create code of conduct documents written in every day simple language. This should include some expectation of social responsibility from the employees. • Make it Do-able: Once the vision is decided, break it into small chunks. Ask employees to pick one thing they want to do. For example, to help company realize zero-waste vision, one employee could focus on recycling, other could focus on energy conservation. • Make it Relatable for Employees: Climate change, sustainability and global warming can sometimes be complex issues for employees to understand. Make these relatable to employees. For example, by using emissions calculators, employees can calculate their footprint and learn about ways to reduce their impact. Place a composter in the office trash area. Encourage employees to compost often and as a reward they can take some compost home. Or create a metro only day to encourage use of public transport system. • .www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

How to Appeal to the Rational Side of Employees?... • Go Seasonal: To encourage employees to get involved in sustainability efforts, make your efforts relevant at all times. For example, in summers start water conservation contests/campaigns etc. In winters, focus on energy conservation may be… • Make the Business Case: Explain to employees that sustainability saves utility and other operating costs, improves brand image, provides marketing opportunities, increases customer basewww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

How to Appeal to the Emotional Side of Employees? • Voluntary Participation: Start with a voluntary participation programs to allow employees to explore and learn independently. • Inspire: Create internal communication campaigns to share green tips, news, brochures, success stories, future plans, discuss ideas. Place post-its with green tips on the refrigerator, remote control, office plate or place green ideas on screen saverswww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

How to Appeal to the Emotional Side of Employees?... • Share your Story: Encourage employees to share their green story on company facebook page, email, or monthly meetings • Organize Family Outing Days: Take your employees and their families on a recycling spree or tree plantation campaign. • Guest Lectures: Search for guest lectures in your area and organize an office trip to the lecture. • Employee Lectures: Each month give a sustainability related topic to one of the employee to present on. For example, composting, recycling, carbon offsets, water conservation, tips for energy saving in winters etc.www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

How to Appeal to the Motivational Side of Employees? • Friendly competition: Make it rewarding for the employees’ by creating small contests between employees/departments. Recognize the employee/department who used least paper, conserved water, recycled most often. • Organize a Green Day: By organizing an earth day, recycling day or simply clean up day, you will provide employees with an easy opportunity to network and share ideas about going green. Employees could be asked to come up with ideas to green their immediate work space. • Performance Management: Include sustainability and social responsibility in job descriptions, employee annual goals and employee reviews. • Awards: Create special awards for employees to recognize their sustainability efforts • Share your Success: On a monthly basis, in company meeting, share how much paper you saved, how many aluminum cans were recycled, how you saved on utility billswww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

4 Competitions to Boost Moral and Awareness Battery Recycling: Hold a competition to Save the Trees: Teach your staff to print smarter by holding a see which employee collects the most competition. Divide the office into teams, and then assign each dead batteries for recycling. This will team a certain amount of copy paper. At the end of one month provide a nice activity and raise whichever team has paper left gets a free lunch. Whatever team awareness amongst the employees. The has the most paper left gets free lunch for a week. winner gets a dinner coupon where as the one who collects least gets to take them to the recycling center. Reusing the Lunch Bags: Every day that Ride the Bike or Carpool to Work: This one runs on the honor they bring their sandwich to work in the system; every day people write their name on a list posted in same plastic bag or bring their lunch in the office if they rode their bike, took the bus or carpooled to the same paper bag they get a mark with work. Give it a month, then reward those who did the best with a permanent marker on their bag. At the something fun, perhaps a gift card for a new pair of walking end of the month the three people who shoes. have the most marks on their bags get a free lunch at a local restaurant and an extra half hour lunch period that day.www.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Some Facts to Make YOUR Employee Engagement Program A Success • Most effective programs promote sustainability in business travel, purchasing, water use, and food • Most common sustainability engagement areas are still waste and recycling, energy use and commuting • Organizations with a method for employees to share ideas were more than 6 times as likely to have a very effective program • Organizations that collected data on their footprint, the impact of staff travel and commuting, and employee sustainability efforts were roughly 3 times as likely to have a successful program Source: Brighter Planet “Greening the Workplace 2011” Second Biennial Surveywww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Go Green Today contactus@gbb.org 1-866-979-1071 www.gbb.orgwww.gbb.org 1.866.979.1071

Go Green: Sustainability Employee Engagement

by Green Business Bureau

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