Get Senior Management Involved & Engage Employees
We often hear that top‐down vision and commitment is critical for the success of sustainability programs. While many stress the importance of senior management support and involvement, others think it is important to maintain the decentralized, grassroots flavor of green teams so employees can modify and adjust based on local needs.
Although the eBay Green Team has grown, they have avoided constraining the teams with too much formal process, recognizing that environmental issues and employee interests often vary by location. The Green Team has sub‐groups that are organized by geographic site and overall coordination and support comes from dedicated resources in the Global Communications Department.
The key seems to be to provide tools, resources and best practices to harness and support the green team, without squashing their grassroots spirit, energy and innovation with too much structure and hierarchy.Page from Yahoo! agrees, “It helps to have a consistent corporate policy and buy‐in from the executive level.” But, she stresses, “It is also important to have green teams at the grassroots level to provide tangible, visible, creative and viral ways to create behavior changes in the workplace.”
Engage Employees to Capture IdeasAn important characteristic of green teams is that the ideas come from the bottom‐up. If there is corporate guidance on strategic issues to focus on, for example to reduce waste or energy use, it is important that the on‐the‐ground teams have the ability to propose their own initiatives.
Companies like Genentech, Yahoo! and eBay all have web‐based tools that allow employees to suggest ideas on how to make their company more sustainable. eBay recently held a Big Green Idea contest, asking employees to submit their best green ideas and suggestions through a submission form on the company’s intranet. They received over 600 ideas! Most companies with these forums have experienced an outpouring of suggestions. The bigger challenge is setting up a user‐friendly and quick process for screening ideas and identifying the most viable ones.
One option for this process includes creating sub‐groups that focus on key issue areas. For example, at Genentech, the green team is divided into 6 sub‐groups that focus on specific issues such as recycling, transportation, energy, Web, waste and water.Employees can submit their ideas online and suggestions are forwarded to the appropriate sub‐group. Once screened by the appropriate sub‐group, the concept is forwarded onto the Environmental Sustainability Team, a corporate group that includes senior level representatives from key departments, for final approval. This structure helps connect the final ideas to the department heads, which can provide leadership and resources to implement a new program.
At eBay, they have created a cross‐functional Sustainability Steering Committee that includes senior leaders from key departments, including facilities, procurement and IT. After the Green Team screens employee suggestions, this core team helps to prioritize and act on those ideas.
Communicate and Share Best PracticesMany companies are harnessing Web 2.0 tools (interactive web sites, blogs, discussion boards and Twitter) to raise awareness of environmental issues and support green teams.
Intel has created a new portal, Green.Intel, to support interaction among employees for sharing best practices or getting guidance on implementing ideas. They also have a communications platform that focuses on Intel’s environmental efforts, with updates from the CSR and operations team, videos on different Intel programs, an internal blog and a discussion forum open to all employees.
eBay likewise has created an intranet site that offers their Green Team members information on green events and best practices for the office, travel and home. They also recently held a Global Green Team Leader Summit, where Green Team leaders from across the company gathered to share best practices and explore common interests and issues. In addition, this venue provided eBay the opportunity to share corporate level priorities, such as their recent commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.They also recently launched a new publi c site, ebay.com/greenteam, focused on smarter, greener choices that buyers and sellers can make both on eBay and off.
Engage Employees With Their BelliesOne of the employee engagement strategies gaining traction is sustainable food service. Companies such as eBay, Intel and Yahoo! are all working with Bon Appétit Management Company to lower the carbon footprint of their food and bring more sustainable food choices to their employees.
Page from Yahoo! explains, “Something we love about them (Bon Appétit) is their commitment to the sustainability of food and the fact that they are always tinkering with new ideas to source food more sustainably and to raise employee awareness.”
While bringing more sustainable food is often a corporate decision, not linked to the green teams, Bon Appétit has partnered with several green teams to launch a low carbon diet campaign, raise awareness around the carbon footprint of food choices, reduce disposable take‐out containers and create an on‐site CSA program.“I can’t say enough great things about Bon Appétit,” says Freeman from Intel. “They are very willing to do different things based on employee interest.
Engage Employees in Their Personal LivesThere is a growing trend to engage employees on multiple levels, both at work and at home. Wal‐Mart, Hewlett Packard, eBay, Deloitte and Genentech all provide tools and resources to help employees live a more sustainable personal life, but participation is not mandated.
Specific strategies range from providing energy kits to reduce their personal carbon footprint at home to offering incentives for biking to work to offering advice and special vendor deals to asking employees to commit to personal sustainability practices.
The theory is if you can get employees engaged and excited about being greener in their personal lives, they will bring this excitement and energy to their jobs as well.Wal‐Mart’s Personal Sustainability Project (PSP) is an often‐cited model of engaging employees in their lives and at home. As part of Wal‐Mart’s commitment to sustainability, the program encourages associates to adopt habits that positively impact the environment, their communities and their own personal health and well being. PSPs can be anything from pledging to recycle, to eating healthier or getting outdoors more.
While focusing on associates personal lives, the program has increased sustainable thinking on the job. One Wal‐Mart employee noticed lights on around the clock in the break room. He suggested to the energy division that they remove the lights, saving the company nearly $1 million in electricity bills every year!AngelPoints, a provider of enterprise software solutions for employee engagement, has recently partnered with Saatchi & Saatchi S, the sustainability strategy firm that helped Wal‐Mart create their PSP program, to create a new web‐based platform to help engage employees in sustainability and to track their progress across a number of impact categories, such as reducing your carbon footprint, improving health and wellness, reducing waste and connecting with others.
“The idea of this is to help facilitate green teams, build awareness and get commitments from employees toward greater sustainability,” explains Andrew Mercy, CEO of AngelPoints.Look out for EcoGreenHotel’s August Eco Newsletter as we bring you: Engage Customers to be Part of the Solution and Use Art to Raise Awareness.
About EcoGreenHotel
EcoGreenHotel LLC is a privately-held company dedicated to helping lodging facilities address a broad spectrum of sustainability issues. The company provides information, tools, checklists, current news and trends to the hospitality industry through its website, www.EcoGreenHotel.com. In 2009, the company launched an online marketplace for green products and services at www.EcoGreenHotelStore.com. In addition to the online offerings, EcoGreenHotel provides customized consulting services tailored to the needs of the hospitality industry in the areas of energy efficiency and certifications, including LEED, Green Seal and Energy Star. For those properties that have reached certified levels of sustainability, EcoGreenHotel assists with marketing services to position the properties within the growing “green” space and enhance revenue. For further information, email info@EcoGreenHotel.com or call 888.229.0213.
