Do Your Employees Care About Sustainability? Tips to get people on board with your Sustainability Goals

No matter how big or small the organization, companies everywhere are making new and exciting commitments to sustainability - externally and internally. 

But how much weight do your external sustainability commitments hold when inside your office you throw things away instead of recycling, leave the water running while you make copies, and generally don't set a good example. 

Changing behavior is not easy but in a supportive group environment you can prioritize actions that will foster a greater understanding of your sustainable business strategies. 

1. Offer Flexibility | Your employees are already busy. Study work patterns to identify opportunities to insert flexible sustainability training that works for their schedule not yours. Use digital, unique means of communicating this information. Let employees own their education.

2. Be Relevant | Make sure employees understand what sustainability means to them and their responsibilities. Forcing broad generic goals on hard working people will give you at best mixed results. Use focus groups to present sustainability goals and solicit real feedback on why these goals are meaningful to your employees. Recognizes differences between positions, teams, and departments. Cater sustainability information accordingly when you roll out sustainability programs.

3. Keep Current | One of the biggest complaints about all training is when resources and information are out of date. When designing the program, assign accountability for updating content, resources, and especially links (nothing shows you don't care about training by putting dead end links into current training). Get buy-in from everyone involved and make these responsibilities an important part of a job description. Creating a great sustainability training program is one thing; keeping it great is the real goal. 

4. Do It Together | Get everyone on board with your goals. Create team goals and declare and track progress publicly. Don't over promise; set one or two goals at a time to change behavior with a fun challenge. Do challenges for at least two weeks to start forming new habits. Assign team leads to motivate people and create ownership. 

5. Reward Learning | Think of non-monetary incentives. Offer opportunities for professional growth for individuals, teams, and departments. Offering experiential rewards that last long beyond the moment instead of one-time monetary or short-term rewards will save the business money, add more value for employees, and create longer term commitment and engagement in the important process of embedding sustainability in your internal culture. 

Do you have any other ideas or suggestions for employee engagement? Send your thoughts to mackenzie@sustainabilityinreview.com

Thank you!

By Design, Not by Default

For a long time, there has been a major assumption about Sustainability in business. Not always explicitly stated, but clearly communicated through actions taken by the majority of businesses: Sustainability should happen by default.

Whether through the power of intrinsically-motivated leadership or due to the nature of the industry, some companies just "get it". Outsiders assume these leading companies default to sustainable actions - seemingly at odds with stakeholder interests or other business goals. 

Other companies wait until their hands are forced, by bad press from negative consequences of unsustainable practices or other means. These companies ignore sustainable options until they are in the middle of controversy and must respond quickly, without preparation, and often under the scrutiny of the public eye. 

But as a whole, people are beginning to recognize that true sustainable business practice must happen by design and not be default. Those first companies succeed not because they stick to sustainability despite good business sense - it is because they have incorporated sustainability into the core of their business strategy. Sustainability is a lens through which we can view our business practices and make decisions not to the detriment of stakeholder value, but to enhance everything we do as value creators. 

The other kind of company may not have holistically implemented sustainability into its business strategy - but still is beginning to recognize the value of considering sustainability as a highly effective method of risk management, as a tool for capturing more customer value through marketing, as a longer term and truer financial valuation of the company not just in the snapshot of today but as it will exist ten years in the future. 

So, wherever you are of the spectrum of completely integrating Sustainability into your business strategy or just looking to explore how sustainability can enhance your business strategy, grab your drafting pencils and blueprint paper. As in building anything else, constructing Sustainability into your business strategy starts from the foundation. It is a material with which we use to build structure and strength into our businesses - not a coat of green paint we apply liberally to the outside whenever green is en vogue. Sustainability ensures we will succeed, sustain, and thrive well into the future. 

Women's Wear Daily writes about sustainability

Check out this article about the workshop I helped organize with Textile Exchange.

http://www.wwd.com/markets-news/markets-features/sustainability-expanding-its-reach-5826740

Here is the workshop held on March 1, 2012.  It was a great space in SoHo New York which created the opportunity to co-learn and interact in a way that allowed for deep understanding of sustainability in the textile and apparel industry.

To the Clinton Foundation

I received an email from Chelsea Clinton today asking me to give feedback to her father's foundation - the Clinton Foundation.
Now I fully realize that I am one of a few million on this email, but I wanted to share my thoughts with you on what I responded.

"Firstly I want to thank the Clinton Foundation for all of the great work that you have done over the years.  My suggestions come from a place of building on this work not from a place where what has been done is not sufficient.

I feel that inspiration has pulled people to act in a way that is outside of themselves.  The stories of social and environmental change are those that remind me of the strength of the human soul - the globally shared human core that we all share - to be loved and to love others.

I am inspired by the work that gives people the opportunity to follow their own dreams and better their communities.  So I would suggest continuing focusing on education, especially women and children to build better futures for themselves.  This is not only about economics, but about survival skills for growing food, health, sanitation and strong self esteem.

The other movement that I see great strength in is the Fair Trade movement - this is not charity but a systems change. Where more money is spent to not only provide more money to the working poor but to provide skills around democratically elected committees giving workers a voice within their places of work and ultimately their communities.  This is a great gift to any workers and while Fair Trade is focused in developing countries there is an opportunity for these same models to replicated in developed countries where the need for the voice of the poor and under privileged can be strengthened.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my voice.
Nicole"

Want to share your thoughts? Click here http://my.democrats.org/Clinton-Foundation

Who the heck am i?

As I keep venturing out into my sustainability consulting career I have have received some great feedback from colleagues and friends.  And a lot of it centers around my passion for sustainability not only in my career but in my personal life too.

I am very fortunate that I have learned a lot of great lessons about living a more sustainable life and have the opportunity to put my values into practice.  I have a LOT of areas of improvement, but I do have some great practices at home that allow us to reduce our impact.

I wanted to share some things we've put in place that hopefully give you a better sense of who I am and maybe some ideas for things you want to do too.

pickled turnips - all ingredients coming from the garden

me and my turnip "crop"

hanging laundry on the line to dry

my garden

the composter in the back ground - not only is it great for reducing our trash, but I use the compost in the garden which saves on buying dirt!

The vertical potato stacker that Andy made me

my commuter bike with a milk crate fixed on the back for a great basket. 

The kitchen recycling center - co-mingle recycling, soft plastics which we can recycle at the prAna offices, laundry for dirty dish rags and trash, which we take out only every couple of weeks

So there is a little peek into living sustainability.