Creating a Sustainable HR Function
• Lizz Pellet, Fellow Johns Hopkins University and CEO of
EMERGE International.
• Today's Agenda:
• Overview of sustainability and being green
• How to build and leverage your green image
• Three step process for creating a sustainable HR practice:
Evaluate, Eliminate, Illuminate
• Core values alignment to sustainability programs
• Sustainability jobs and industries
ERE.net April 29, 2009
Webinar: Copyright EMERGE International
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What does green mean?
The discussions about
green recruiting are springing up everywhere
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Why is Green Important to your Recruiting Strategy
and Overall HR Initiatives?
The hype and the buzz is building
33%
A Harris poll found that 33 percent of Americans would be more inclined to work
for a green company compared to an organization that does not make a conscious effort
to promote socially and environmentally friendly practices.
28%
Jobfox survey found 28% out of 6,000 respondents would take
environmentalism if free, but would not be willing to take a pay
cut for it.
78%
A Canadian survey was claiming that 78% of the respondents
“given a choice would leave their current job in favor of a greener workplace.”
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Gut Data – Our Intuition (and the Love of Google and
Other “Cool Companies”) Tell Us…
• Going green is becoming a significant factor in the creation of an
employment brand
• Organizations that are not implementing an environmental policy
may be losing employees to their competitors
• Some sustainability incentives may be “sexy” to employees:
> Subsidies for hybrid cars
> On site farmers markets
> Green commuting vouchers
> Organic dry cleaning
> Reward and recognition program incentives are shifting
> Recycling efforts: water bottles, ink cartridges (yes, bring them in
from home! We will recycle them here and donate the money to our
community) anything that can be recycled!
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Why is Green Important to Your Recruiting Strategy
and Overall HR Initiatives?
“While candidates of all generations have begun
evaluating potential employers based on their
“greenness” few in recruiting have
leveraged this hot topic in recruitment
communication and activities”.
“Individual recruiters need to make their firm’s
environment stance a critical element of their
sales pitch to potential applicants and
candidates”
Dr. John Sullivan
June, 2007
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What is “Green” Recruiting?
The reality is
in the data
49%
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What is “Green” Recruiting?
61%
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What is “Green” Recruiting?
73%
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Lots of Definitions Out There….
Employers committed to “Green Recruiting” recognize and embrace the
broader issues of social responsibility, community involvement,
environmental stewardship and sustainability of the environment
and openly assess their results at all levels of the organization.
They especially realize the importance of sharing their vision and
actions with employees and candidates in order to attract, engage and
influence the most talented candidates to come and stay.
Gerry Crispin
Chief Navigator, CareerXroads
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Three Step Process for Creating a
Sustainable HR Practice
1. Evaluate
2. Eliminate
3. Illuminate
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Step 1: Evaluate - Perform a Diagnostic
- Are any of your products and/or services environmentally sustainable?
- Are there efforts to facilitate and engage employees broadly to examine
operational processes and maximize environmental sustainability?
- Do you have any jobs whose responsibilities are to reduce you firm’s carbon
footprint?
- Do your job descriptions reflect your green commitment?
- Is your firm involved in outside (community) activities to compensate for lack
of sustainability in products and services?
- Have you looked at your recruiting process to calculate its carbon footprint?
- Have you been turned down by qualified candidates because of
environmental issue? LEED certified companies are KEY to being green.
- Have great employees left for \"greener\" pastures? Where did they go?
- Do your leaders know the score and are you communicating the message?
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Data Talks – Green Washing Walks
- Compileall the information you can find about your
company’s employment brand and your level of “greeness”
before getting started. There may be initiatives underway that
you are not aware of.
- Google search is where you may have to start to find best
practice examples. From the home page click “google scholar”
for an amazing amount of data that has already been collected
and validated.
- Go to your competitors’ websites and see how green they
are.
- Check out a green publication resources like:
www.greenatworkmag.com/ a magazine dedicated to being
green at work!
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Step 2: Eliminate – Get Rid of Redundancy and Deploy Business
Process Reengineering to the HR Function
• Measurement and metrics
• Business process reengineering
• TQM, CQI or Six Sigma
• Process mapping
• Cost – Benefit analysis
• Green is not just for tree huggers any more:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VSNFE6eUjfY
• Is it all about making money?
• What about social responsibility?
• TWO VIEWS……….
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=iXsaYR1Izqw&feature=related
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=yQykGinvNrw&feature=related
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We Need to Quantify Our Efforts
So what’s a ton of paper – really?
• For every ton of paper made, there are 24 trees used, 40
thousand gallons of clean water is used during
production, and among the by products of paper
production are 5,690 lbs of greenhouse gasses and
almost 20,000 gallons of waste water.*
• Are your recruiting materials printed on recycled paper?
• Have you implemented a copy paper (double side)
printing policy?
• Do you have a message on the bottom of your emails –
“please think before printing this email”?
• Do you claim to be a “carbon neutral” company?
> www.carbonfootprint.com
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Virtually Everything May be Virtual Sooner
Than We Think
• Greenjobinterview.com gave me an
example of a large healthcare organization
that spent $1M on travel expenses for job
interviews but only hired 15% of candidates
that flew in.
• Essentially wasting $850K in related costs.
If they had reduced their air travel process
they could have saved a ton of money and
captured the impact on the environment
(carbon footprint)
• Video job interviewing may be the next
trend. We know candidate selection is very
relational based – so the question must be
asked, can a camera and conversation
replace face to face?
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Step 3: Illuminate - Employment Branding and
Green Messaging
• Employment branding is a way to differentiate yourself from your
competition and to attract, retain and repel candidates.
• Being crystal clear about who you are from a cultural perspective
can repel the candidates you know are not a good fit –
significantly increasing the ROI of recruitment and retention
efforts.
• Creating a green message can support retention efforts for
employees who are themselves, becoming more socially
conscious and will look for this values alignment in their work
experience.
• No matter what message you create, if it is not authentic and
congruent to your true organizational culture – employees may
be attracted, but will not stick around very long once they are on
boarded.
• The Economic Recovery Exodus……..
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Today’s Employees Want Transparency
• Employees are looking for a meaningful,
authentic and congruent work experience
• It is deeply rooted in U.S. culture to talk
about our “jobs”
• Cultural fit is paramount in finding a job
you love
• Yahoo! employee who kept a twitter log
the day he was fired and walked his
Twitter community through the entire
event. Lucky for Yahoo! it was not a
horrific experience.
• Potential employees are twittering about
their job interviews, the people who are
interviewing them and how they are
being treated. Potential PR nightmare or
outstanding exposure opportunity.
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Employment Brand Examples
Timberland: The Mission
> Our mission is to equip people to make a difference in their
world. We do this by creating outstanding products and by
trying to make a difference in the communities where we
live and work.
We’re a big company made up of a lot of small parts and
incredibly talented people. We make boots, shore, clothes
and gear that are comfortable enough to wear all day and
rugged enough for all year. We don’t rest on our
accomplishments. If we did, we’d only have ever made one
waterproof leather boot.
Our place in this world is bigger than the things we put in it.
So we volunteer in our communities. Making new products
goes hand in hand with making things better. That means
reducing our carbon footprint and being as
environmentally responsible as we can.
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Employment Brand Examples
Whole Foods:
They give us “whole people” – and “whole planet” on their
site. “We believe companies, like individuals, must assume
their share of responsibilities as tenants of Planet Earth”.
Proctor and Gamble: www.pgjobs.com
One of the best career web sites that evokes a sense of
community, brand awareness, imagination, creativity and
socially responsibility through animation, imagery and
music.
Starbucks: Living our values – Starbucks commitment to
Social Responsibility. Developed a six panel brochure
that outlines their values and how the values are woven
into their mission statement and guiding principles.
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Poll Time: Question 1
• Does your company have an
environmental policy?
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Poll Time: Question 2
• Does your company recycle?
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Leveraging Your Green Image to Attract and Retain Top Talent
• If your company recycles, you have an
environmental policy, you just might not be
advertising it! This is what creating an
employment brand that leverages going green
is all about.
• If your company participates in any community
activity that is focused on sustainability or
environmental pursuits, you may not be
leveraging this in your messaging.
• You may want to conduct a “brand scan” to
gather all the data and activity that is currently
taking place so you can create the story. You
may need a “story teller” to complete this
activity.
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Brand and Promote Green Recruiting to “Attract”
• Liberty Mutual spent $40 million on a new consumer and
employment branding campaign and is now known as “the
responsibility company”:
http://www.responsibilityproject.com/about/
• Companies are searching social networking sites to find
candidates. While Youtube and Myspace work, try some of the
niche sites like www.spokeo.com They know who you are!
• We can not talk about the creation of a green HR function without
looking at our views, values, protocol or policies on social
networking.
• Recent search of LinkedIn for “green” groups yielded 1,520!
• Recent Amazon search for books on social networks:
> 12,137 books about Twitter
> 6,025 books about My Space
> 3,033 books about Face Book
> 717 books about LinkedIn
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Quick Quiz on Social Networking
• Do you Google a potential
candidate before making an
offer?
• Do you tweet on Twitter?
• Have you created a
Twellowhood?
• Are you currently blocking
access to Myspace at work or
have malware protection?
• Do you agree that web 2.0 is
just another fad?
• Have you had an encounter with
a “virtual world”? Wii Fit…..
• Do you blog or feel bloated after
a large meal?
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Context: What is Social Networking?
• Social networking: any
application or website
that links communities of
people together through
the ability to upload and
share media such as
photos, videos and
bookmarks, blogs, or to a
message or link with
friends, or to make new
ones.
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The World of Social Networking…and it Changes
Every Day!
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Talent Management Strategies: The cost of Using
Social Networks Versus Job Boards
• Facebook Free
• MySpace Free
• Youtube Free
• LinkedIn Free
• Blogs (Word Press) Free
• Twitter (application) Free
• Monster $$$
• Career Builder $$$
• Niche boards $$
• Micro sites $$
• Assoc. website ad $$
• LinkedIn Corp. $$
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Promote Green Recruiting to Attract and Retain:
What are Your Core Values?
In a report by Sustainable Business Network of Washington (SB
NOW) they give us a great list to why a company should go
green. Their number one reason?
1. Increasing employee satisfaction, retention and productivity
2. Improving operational efficiency and effectiveness
3. Saving energy, water and raw materials
4. Shielding yourself from escalating energy and water prices
5. Branding the business and differentiating it from the
competition
6. Developing a positive, proactive relationship with local
compliance inspectors
7. Reducing pollution, waste and greenhouse gas emissions
8. Avoiding fines and other sanctions green guide and certification
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Ten Best Green Jobs for the Next Decade
Farmer, Forester, Solar Power Installer, Energy Efficiency Builder, Wind Turbine
Fabricator, Conservation Biologist, Green MBA and Entrepreneur, Recycler,
Sustainability Systems Developer, and Urban Planner
Fast Company: Anya Kamenetz Jan 13, 2009
Illustration by Erika Schneider
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EVP and the future of Social Networking and sustainability
Company Commitment
Employees
Employee Value Proposition/Brand
Health and Financial
Recruiting/ Training and Pay, Work/
Work
Social
Well-being
Security
Orientation
Career Recognition,
Life Environment
Networks
Development
Performance
balance Sustainability
Leadership
programs
Program Communication
Delivery
Content
Vehicles
Channels
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I. Form a Sustainability Team and Set Strategy
What are you going to commit to in the next 6 months, 9 months 12 months
to make a shift to sustainability
II. Evaluate: Collect Data
What measurement, metrics, statistics and benchmarking data will you use
III. Eliminate: Business Processes and Waste
TQM, process mapping – look at every Talent Management process from
recruitment through reward and recognition programs
IV. Illuminate: Align to Employment Brand and
Promote
Embed in your efforts into your: EVP, website, recruiting materials, staffing
initiatives, video, podcasts, MySpace page and measure attraction, retention,
candidate perception…
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Questions and Final Thoughts
• Get started – don’t be left behind!
• For more information on how to live green check out:
• http://www.ivillage.com/green
• http://www.idealbite.com/
• http://www.payitgreen.org/
• http://www.urbanhabitat.org/node/528
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