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Developing Employee Engagement in Sustainability
An organisation that may be undertaking new Sustainability strategies require profound commitment from employees throughout the period of change. Hiring practices, internal cultural development efforts, and the attention, responsiveness and resources necessary to achieve a high level of employee engagement are critical. Without a high rate of employee engagement, the organisation will not achieve average objectives, much less the initiatives that will accelerate sustainability achievement.
Low employee engagement will affect an organisation by reducing productivity, decreasing profitability, undermine customer satisfaction and sales and impede strategic success. These employees tend to be less open to organisational change. In short there is a clearly demonstrated link between employee engagement and organisational growth and sustainability.
Most organisations today are developing sustainability strategies in an uncertain future. High levels of employee engagement will be critical in this future.
Senior Management must win employee "buy-in" to their sustainability strategies and their plan to make the organisational changes necessary for implementation of sustainability initiatives. "Buy-in" begins with an engaged employee and wins support for the new vision and the steps required throughout the organisation to achieve it.
Any organisation can increase the level of employee engagement towards their sustainability strategy. Here are ten tips to help you improve the level of employee engagement in your enterprise.
Make employee engagement part of your organisational culture;
Communicate the sustainability strategy across the organisation, and listen actively to the insights, experience and perspective of every employee at every level of the organisation;
Value and acknowledge the meaningful work of each employee and remind them that their work contributes in a significant way to the success of your organisation;
Earn trust every day by clearly and consistently sharing the direction of the organisation and that employees can help senior management achieve success;
Emphasise career development. People rewarded for increased skills and knowledge are more engaged;
Create confidence in the future. Engaged employees have confidence that more sustainable futures will lead to success. Confidence results from consistent and appropriate senior management;
Align the organisation with strategic goals to help employees at every level of the organisation understand how their work contributes to the success of the company;
Align employee performance with sustainability goals so that senior management can work with employees to develop meaningful goals that clearly advance organisational structure;
Clarify the new sustainability culture to employees to ensure that each individual understands their role and value; and
Manage employee engagement. When employees are able to build a high level of employee engagement and develop a strong culture of engagement, productivity, profit and perspective can be expected to improve throughout your enterprise.
SustainIT software Solutions offers a window into the next level of response for businesses committed to becoming sustainable and creating sustainability strategies. If you think this subject will impact your business please get in contact with Anthony Peake on 01275 774168 or email a.peake@sustainitsolutions.co.uk.
Next month we will focus on how to engage your senior management!
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Local Washing is the new Greenwashing
As we know some organisations are often seen to jump onto various bandwagons or trends and market their products in such a way that consumers are often led to believe things that are not necessarily as they seem. When environmentalism (read “ECO”) first became popular and consumers wanted to spend their money on eco goods and services, the market place immediately turned to greener products and continues to grow in that aspect today. We all know that not every product can have an environmental benefit and some are deceptively marketed to show that they are. This marketing is what is known as “greenwashing”. Now, however the new “greenwash” appears to be “localwash”, the former was originally a play on “whitewashing”.
Over the last decade or so, we have seen a strong consumer movement towards eating and buying local. Big brands cottoned on and have looked for ways to cater to this new consumer desire. Some localwashing corporate initiatives have been ridiculous. A globally distributing sauce-maker, owned by a London based corporation, has launched an "eat local" branding campaign in Canada, apparently based around the notion that you should eat their sauce with your locally grown produce. This is confusing in many ways, the least of which is in implying that "eating locally" is the same thing as "eating nationally" in a country of some 3.9 million square miles. There is a huge debate regarding what does “local” actually mean. Local to who? How far is local? I think most people will agree that 3.9 million square miles doesn’t represent local.
“Localists” believe that shopping local is the number one thing you can do to help keep your local economy strong and keep environmental impact minimised. So, if you are actively conscious about where your products come from, you can then make an informed decision on what and how you buy.
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Ever wanted to flush your reports down the toilet ...?
A miracle working machine called the "White Goat" by an innovative Japanese company is an early contender for the Gadget Show! It directly recycles office paper into toilet paper and users need only add water along with any embarrassing e-mail print outs or unwanted reports they need shredded; and outcomes toilet paper, possibly of dubious softness.
A built in shredder moves the paper onto a pulper where it gets dissolved in water. The pulp becomes wet paper and is eventually dried and rolled up into ready-to-use toilet paper.
The machine takes half an hour to produce one neatly wrapped toilet roll and uses the equivalent of 40 sheets of standard office paper per roll. It is claimed that it will save 60 cedar trees each year (but gives no indication of the number of visits you're supposed to have!). White Goat reportedly goes on sale this summer. I want one!!!
Click here for a video
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COP15 - What has changed for UK Businesses?
The UN climate summit in Copenhagen - COP15 - ended just before Christmas without a new global agreement on climate change. What did happen was an acknowledgement of a deal agreed by five nations, led by the US, called the Copenhagen Accord. Containing no reference to a legally binding agreement, as some developing countries and climate activists wanted (and no deadline for transforming it into a binding deal), the accord was merely "recognised" by the 193 nations at the Copenhagen summit, rather than approved. The highlights of what was agreed were: a near global acknowledgement that global warming should be limited to less than 2C (3.6F), the degree of warming generally accepted as being "dangerous"; Rich countries must register the emissions cuts they will make by 2020 by the end of January 2010 (however, there is no guarantee that this will limit warming in the future as what countries cut is up to them); New and additional money "approaching $30bn" will be channelled to poorer nations over the period 2010-12, with a goal of providing an annual sum of $100bn by 2020; The pledges of rich countries will come under "rigorous, robust and transparent" international scrutiny and developing countries will submit national reports on their emissions pledges under a method "that will ensure that national sovereignty is respected".
As the dust settles on the conference, it is important to highlight what Copenhagen changed for businesses in the UK. The important issues reflect that the countries which brokered the Accord text, the US, China, India, South Africa, Brazil and the EU, indicates a world in which the balance of power has significantly changed in the last 20 years, so UK businesses will need to compete in a very different market; There is no longer any question that climate change is central to the political thinking of every country on the planet, and public awareness has also massively increased. UK businesses can no longer ignore this fact. However, the most important change is that green growth is now the prevailing economic model of our time. The ideas that addressing climate change is bad for business was buried at Copenhagen because countries from both developed and developing worlds have announced low-carbon economic plans and are moving forward with their initiatives. This ensures that, on a positive note, attention will now shift to a host of carbon reduction initiatives by countries, cities, companies and communities that are starting to build low carbon economies from the base up.
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New Year Sustainability Resolutions
In case you haven't yet thought of your new years resolution, how about combining it with your company's sustainability programme. Here's some ideas ... Environmental Health Safety and Sustainability Managers can resolve to broaden the scope of your sustainability programme beyond the environment and climate change issues to include social and economic responsibilities; Corporate Responsibility Officers can resolve to move beyond issue management or corporate strategy to help each facility or other 'point of presence' establish a sustainability management system based on the soon-to-be-released ISO 26000 (Social Responsibility Standard) and an operational base of ISO 14001; Supply Chain Managers can resolve to work with suppliers to create a value chain based on sustainability, rather than based on fear that sourcing will be replacing them if they do not conform to your requests immediately; Senior Leaders can resolve to provide the direction to create a framework that will provide the sustainability action plan which implements your sustainability strategy to your facilities and supply chain. You can also provide resources to maintain the social focus to operate in every community in which you do business; Facility Managers can resolve to create your own sustainability management system and align it with the corporate strategy. Involve employees in the planning and implementation of the programme.
SustainIT software Solutions offers a window into the next level of response for businesses committed to becoming sustainable and creating sustainability strategies. If you think this subject will impact your business please get in contact with Anthony Peake on 01275 774168 or email a.peake@sustainitsolutions.co.uk.
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Scrappage Schemes
Scrappage schemes sent car sales soaring towards the end of 2009. In the UK, a late rush sparked a 38.9% rise in sales in December when compared to the same month in 2008, but the scheme which offers new car buyers £2,000 discount if they scrap a car older than 10 years, failed to make up for last years dire performance, so for the year as a whole new registrations fell 6.4% from 2008 to less than two million cars. With consumers expected to steer clear of the car market this year, carmakers are relying on companies to come back into the market as the economic recovery gains momentum. Companies have been putting off their buying decisions and running their existing fleets for longer before replacing them, so 2009 saw a real slump in the business car market.
Chief Operating Officer Anthony Peake, has therefore decided to 'take a lead' and buy a new personal car for business use and at the same time 'help save the planet'. His old car, a Toyota RAV4, had an average MPG of 25, a cost of £0.25 per mile, and with an annual mileage of 24,000 this would produce emissions of 7,812kg of CO2. This cost Anthony £6,000 annually in fuel and a further £600 in annual car tax, MOT and servicing. His brand new Toyota Yaris has an annual average MPG of 56, a cost of £0.15 per mile. The average annual mileage would produce emissions of 5,454kg of CO2. It will cost £3,600 in annual fuel cost and a further £35 in annual car tax, MOT and servicing (no MOT or Servicing costs for next 3 years). Therefore the cost to Anthony for his new car (after discounts and the scrappage scheme) is £12,055, his annual saving over 4 years will be £11,600. So in fact the car will cost Anthony £455 and save the planet from 9,432kg of CO2. Brilliant!!!
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