There are plenty of studies and calls to action on Employee Engagement. But when it comes to Employee Engagement and Sustainability there’s a lot more work to be done.

Studies that attempt to correlate these two factors have found that most employees (86 percent, in one survey) have not been engaged by their employers. Yet, a very large number of corporate CEOs (93 percent!) recognize that “sustainability will be critical to the future success of their companies.”

The Brighter Planet study, released in February this year recognized that the shift toward sustainability is “a cultural shift, and it’s one that must happen at all levels within an organization to be truly effective.” It also noted that “organizations need to work on communicating sustainability issues and initiatives to staff.”

So we wanted to find out ourselves (see link to survey) because even “the definition of sustainability is still in question,” observed Derrick Mains.

“The media tells you it is environmental sustainability; Wall Street will tell you it is all about risk management and profitability; other organizations will tell you it is about social responsibility –how your company interacts with employees the world… it could even be about procurement and process efficiency.”

Listen to a short clip here of Derrick Mains explain the goals of the survey, and the connection between sustainability and employee engagement.

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We’re excited to launch the first in a series of Employee Engagement surveys, and invite you to be a part of it.

We like to find out about employee attitudes and motivations in companies’ sustainability efforts. Is it being driven by management, or by passionate employees? Results will be posted once a month to our site.

If you would share your thoughts in this short survey, you will be entered for a drawing of a $100 gift card to Amazon.com this month!

Take survey here:

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Employee engagement and brand ambassadors are often mentioned in the same sentence.

But we often see how those who work in Marketing, and those who have ‘Internal Communications’ on their business card don’t seem to breathe the same oxygen. Maybe they eat in the same cafeteria, use a common email server, and are a few degrees of separation from each other. But they appear to have very different marching orders.

But that will soon change.

Internal and External communicators –the former from an HR track, and the latter from marketing communications –now have the tools, and sometimes the permission, to jumped tracks, so to speak.

The best companies don’t put them in different parts of the building anymore. Jay Baer made a great point last week, referring to the problem of ‘information asymmetry’ that businesses face. Basically it means that people outside of the company seem to have more information than those inside. What this means, he says, is that “it really requires companies to have more than one set of antennae for the organization.” Companies today need to unleash host of ‘unofficial marketers’ to represent their brand.

The Org Chart, however, does not let this happen.

Robert Scoble, while he was at Microsoft, used to be part of a video team that profiled employees and products –more or less an internal communicator. Yet he was able to jump tracks, engage with customers, and become the unoffiial voice of Microsoft, despite NOT being in PR or marketing.

Our definition of branding is still stuck in the lock-down model, even though the line between internal and external communication has all but been erased. As Interbrand recommends, internal branding shouldn’t be bogged down in restrictive brand guidelines. A brand ambassador is not just someone who could promote the company via a press release. It is someone who could respond at 2 am in the morning, when a customer has a question –a question that cannot wait for the person with ‘marketing’ on her business card to respond later that day.

It may be time to reprint your business cards, and refresh the org chart. There may be brand ambassadors in your organization just waiting to be tapped!

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This is part three of a three-part series on Transforming Your Waste Stream into a Recycling Stream.

America Recycles Day is today! The perfect day for your company to pledge to start or enhance a business recycling program.

Getting Started
Oftentimes, just knowing where to start with an office-recycling program is the biggest barrier; however, it is also the greatest opportunity. There are many ways to begin big five recycling efforts. Here is one simple sample plan:

1. Identify what materials are generated in sufficient quantities within your business to merit recycling with a waste assessment. This can be conducted in-house.

“A simple review of what kind of waste is being generated – a “waste assessment” – will help businesses identify the most prevalent discarded materials that would make the most sense to target in a recycling program,” Scott Mouw, Environmental Supervisor for the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance, suggests. “But even if they are only a small part of the waste stream, materials like aluminum, plastic, glass and steel are easy to capture and find outlets for.”

As Mouw suggests, if your company is small, you may decide to focus on paper recycling collection with a service provider and collect and recycle other materials (e.g., aluminum cans, glass and plastic bottles) through individual efforts such as employees taking turns bringing these smaller quantities of materials home and adding them to their residential recycling bins.

2. Set priorities and goals for a big five program.

3. Educate the office about recycling initiative. Explain expectations and responsibilities of the employees.

4. Evaluate progress and adjust the program to maintain successful results over time.

Since paper represents the largest slice of the municipal solid waste pie—especially at work—paper and cardboard are generally the best materials with which to begin recycling efforts. For the commercial sector, paper and aluminum recycling rates seem to support the relative ease of recycling these components of the big five.

According to the Paper Industry Association Council, “A record-high 63.4 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling in 2009.” The Aluminum Association reported 54.2 percent of used aluminum beverage cans were recycled. 2008 EPA Recycling Facts and Figures report recycling rates for HDPE (#2) plastics at 29.3 percent, glass containers at 28.0 percent and PET (#1) bottles and jars recovered for recycling at 27.2 percent.

According to Mouw, “Often the weight and volume of paper offers the best opportunity for substantial waste reduction and cost avoidance.” He adds, “Still, recycling markets and the environmental benefits of diverting the other [big five] materials are also substantial in their own right and should not be overlooked, especially if there is an ability to operate a very simple commingled recycling program where paper and the other materials can be combined in collection.”

The overall goal with starting or enhancing a big five recycling program should be to work toward reducing your waste stream and replacing it with a recycling stream.  To this end, you not only improve your triple bottom line accounting, but also the environment – efforts well worth the investment on the road to zero waste and sustainability.

Start the conversation…^™
Since 1960, EPA data has shown steady increases in recycling; however, overall recycling rates seemed to have leveled out just over the 30% mark in the past few years. What actions can your company use to start or improve recycling of the big five in your office and help increase national recycling rates?

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This is part two of a three-part series on Transforming Your Waste Stream into a Recycling Stream.

America Recycles Day is November 15^th — the perfect day for your company to pledge to start or enhance a business recycling program.

Implementing a plan for recycling the big five at work can be challenging. Four common barriers include:

Availability
While most communities with residential curbside recycling programs also offer commercial recycling programs, communities in more rural areas may only have access to drop-off programs where users must bring their materials to a facility for recycling.

However, when it comes to paper recycling, which is often the largest component of the waste stream in the workplace, the outlook is promising.  According to a 2007 American Forest and Paper Association Community Survey, there has been marked growth in curbside recycling for paper in both small and large communities since 2005. Access to curbside recycling certainly makes it easier to recycle materials from work; however, drop-off recycling programs can still be feasible if you are located in a small community or remote location with no recycling service providers available to pick up materials.

Collection
Finding space for not only interior and exterior collection bins, but also for such equipment as a baler to compact cardboard or cans, can be a challenge to some businesses. Further, initial investments for equipment may be required if not supported or supplied from community recycling programs and recycling vendors. For example, you may find that you generate enough cardboard and/or aluminum cans to warrant the investments into special interior collection bins and/or a compacting baler.

One solution to consider if you are tight for space or funding is to work with other businesses in your area.  For instance, if your business is a part of a strip mall or office complex, devising a cooperative plan may save not only on equipment space and investment costs, but also on waste removal and recycling costs as well. If large quantities of recyclables are generated by collective efforts, you may even increase your market share of profits.

Negotiations
When negotiating for waste and recycling services, be sure that you are not paying for waste hauling services and then tacking recycling services on to that cost. When you begin or enhance a recycling program, your waste generation should go down and in turn your waste hauling charges as well.  Scott Mouw, Environmental Supervisor for the North Carolina Division of Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance, explains, “depending on an individual business’s situation, there could be a marginal cost of recycling if the service provider needs to charge for collection (which is often the case).”

Mouw goes on, “Businesses must sharpen their pencil on the waste side to make sure they take advantage of waste service cost savings when they implement recycling. In general, finding a service provider is a big step in the process but businesses can often get help from local and state government recycling programs in helping find recycling service companies.”

Most communities have local- or state-government recycling coordinators (check the listings in the government pages of your phonebook under Recycling, Public Works, Environmental Protection or Solid Waste Management) who can assist with information about equipment and markets and information about community recycling service providers. If you do not have a recycling coordinator to help you, check with your current trash hauler to see if they offer recycling pickup. This may be the most economical option when you are already an established customer with them, but not always.  The question you want to ask is, ‘What type of package deal can I get to reduce waste hauling charges and include recycling pickup?’ Ideally, you want to keep your costs the same or reduce them by adding on recycling services.

Engaging Employees
When starting or improving a recycling program, involvement and education of all employees is key.

“It is important to involve all parties in the company that take part in the generation and management of waste – production workers, the business office, shipping/receiving staff, etc,” says Mouw, who works to expand recycling markets in North Carolina as well as the southeast.

“Time and time again, the most successful waste-reducing businesses are those who take a team approach to the problem and get ideas from everyone involved.”

Recyclers will be interested in quality and quantity of your materials. Keep them clean and free of contamination to receive the best share of market revenues if available to you and to avoid your recycling efforts ending up in your dumpster where they will waste resources and increase waste hauling charges.

Involvement of all employees from the start, and initial training and signage reminding everyone of your policies and procedures will go a long way in making your big five recycling programs successful. Use signs to clearly indicate recycling bin locations and instructions about what, where, how and why they should recycle. Consider mass e-mails to keep employees abreast of recycling goals met or ones the company is striving to achieve.

An online guide from The Center for Research on Environmental Decisions at Columbia University says, “Giving people an immediate incentive, if possible, also makes behavior change easier.”  Posting the department with the highest recycling rate each month can help foster team spirit, motivate friendly competition and increase recycling rates within your organization.

Monday in Part 3, starting a business recycling program.

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The key to success with corporate sustainability programs is employee buy-in and engagement.   Park Howell, of Park&Co, recently wrote a blog post “Feeling all green and tingly inside: How to promote your corporate sustainability initiative internally”  that explored how some organizations are using sustainability programs to involve their employees in “greening” their organizations.

There are those systems, such as “Personal Sustainability Projects,” and “Green Champions,” that encourage employees to take small steps to reduce waste, water and energy use. Park went on to say how GreenNurture’s  online system not only helps other companies do just that but also rewards employees and allows them to pledge to “eco-actions,” or ways to improve efficiency in the workplace that are suggested by anyone in the organization. Other systems involve people within and outside the organization, as does Environmental Entrepreneurialism.

Small steps over time…

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Sustainability is a term that can be applied to just about any human activity.  Mostly used in reference to the natural world and man’s impact on it, sustainability can also mean those business practices that contribute to the lifespan of an organization.  Sustainability encompasses activity both within the organization, as well as its impact on the environment and people outside the organization.

Some indicators of “internal” sustainability include:  employee engagement, employee satisfaction, turnover and absenteeism rates, morale, levels of collaboration and communication.  These indicators may be more difficult to quantify than other “hard” indicators, such as financial data, but they measure aspects of an organization which ultimately impact the bottom line.

Absenteeism and turnover is significantly lower in organizations that have high levels of employee engagement, collaboration, communication and morale. To that point, engaged employees stay for what they give (they feel their job has purpose) and disengaged employees stay for what they get (favorable job conditions, growth opportunities, job security) according to the 2008  Blessing White study titled The State of Employee Engagement.

Happier employees work harder, are more innovative, provide higher levels of customer service and contribute positively to the bottom line.  This synergistic cycle perpetuates the life of the company.

How can your organization create a sustainable culture?

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Last week’s blog post “The Challenge of Change” discussed the three steps to change as according to authors Chip and Dan Heath in their book Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard (Random House Inc.).

Of the three steps in bringing about change, the second is the most critical. That step is to appeal to the emotions, rather than to the reason, of the people you want to change. If someone agrees to make a change on an emotional level, from their heart, most of the work is already done, and the change will be lasting. That’s because decisions they make will come from the perspective of who they are and what someone like them would do if faced with a challenge like they are facing. 

Any effort at change that contradicts or violates someone’s identity is likely to fail.

The difficulty is finding out what appeals to the emotions of a variety of employees, and what they identify with, as each has his or her own needs and values.

According to the authors, one way to get a number of people “on the same page” emotionally is to create an identity that they all willingly adopt. One example they provide is of a can manufacturing company in Brazil. This company had been in business for many years and was doing well, but management wanted to take the company to the next level. They decided to address all their employees as “inventors” and to challenge them with being on the lookout for new innovations.  When new employees joined the company, they signed “Innovation Contracts.”  “Inventing” became a part of everyone’s job, even though most of the workers had no experience in engineering or mechanics.  Procedures were set up so that submitting ideas was easy.

In 2008, employees submitted 134,846 ideas – an average of 145.2 per inventor!  Most of the inventions were for new products and energy-saving ideas.

Another example provided by the authors was of an accounting department manager who was rigid and uncompromising when he was asked to alter his invoicing and funds disbursement system to accommodate some valued clients. It wasn’t until this manager was taken to the offices of one of their non-profit clients and saw first-hand how his system was negatively affecting them that he changed.  At that moment, he realized he was not being the person he wanted to be – he did not want to be seen, or to see himself, as the “problem.” He identified so much with being part of the “solution” that he became an advocate for them, rather than the opponent he had been, and he innovated changes to his accounting system above what had been requested of him.

Zappos, the online shoe sales company, has a rigorous hiring process, making potential employees go through several rounds of interviews and personality tests. When they have made it to the final stage, potential employees are offered a relatively large sum to not take the job. This last weeding out phase ensures that Zappos only hires the people who have the qualities they are looking for. Once hired, Zappos employees are a part of an exclusive group, with a strong identity of being one of the chosen few to work for the best company in that space.

Aligning the identities of your employees with the values and goals of your company will go a long way towards bringing about changes that last. How can your company reinforce or cultivate its identity and those of its employees to maximize employee engagement?

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It seems so simple, almost as if it should go without saying.  But so many of us forget to do it that it is the number one reason employees quit their jobs.  What is this simple thing?  Recognition.  Recognition for a job well done on big projects as well as for small, daily contributions.

Studies have shown that the overwhelming reason people leave their jobs is because of bad managers.  A 2010 Towers Watkins Global Workforce Study showed that 80% of companies in 2009 said that leadership was a top driver for engagement. But “confidence in leaders and managers—particularly their competence and support—is low, especially in terms of interpersonal or “relational” (versus operational) aspects of their roles. Employees appear hungry for an emotional connection to their management teams that they feel is conspicuously absent right now. This is especially disturbing given the central role that leadership continues to play in driving employee engagement.” And the biggest complaint about leadership is that managers ignore their employees.  Why is this such a widespread, destructive phenomenon?

Managers are often not trained to become managers – many are promoted to management positions because they did their prior job well.  Of course, the skills for doing a particular job don’t necessarily lend themselves to knowing how to be a good manager.  Management primarily entails planning, directing, supervising, monitoring a group of individuals to accomplish goals and directives, but very few new managers are given adequate training for these new responsibilities.

It’s been said that it takes five compliments to outweigh negative feelings from a single criticism. That’s a lot of positive feedback to counteract the negative!  And yet, being ignored completely can be even worse than  being criticized.  People who are ignored by their managers dislike their jobs, and feel that they are not doing anything important.  They feel invisible, their productivity drops, and they are merely at their desks to put in their time until they can find a better job.

Engaged employees, those who like their jobs and who stay with their employer longer, feel like valuable members of a team, that their contributions count.  They are significantly more productive.  Studies have shown that the energy level of engaged employees stays high throughout the workday, while the energy level of unhappy employees falls dramatically from 9 a.m. until they are ready to go home, according to Tom Rath and James K. Harter, authors of Well-being: The Five Essential Elements (Deckle Edge).

In the 2008 Blessing White Study “The State of Employee Engagement,” the correlation between engagement and retention was clear, with 85% of engaged employees indicating that they plan to stay with their employer through 2008. Further, the study states that “engaged employees stay for what they give (they like their work); disengaged employees stay for what they get (favorable job conditions, growth opportunities, job security).”

 The difference between happy, productive and engaged employees and those looking to find another job usually boils down to managers who recognize their employees on a regular basis, versus those who do not.  Some managers use salaries and titles to motivate their employees, but these have proven to be less effective over time than praise and recognition.

Recognition must be genuine and specific.  It must be tied to a particular act or accomplishment.  General statements, such as “good job,” are usually meaningless and ineffective. Better to say, “I really appreciate your comments in the meeting today – you gave us something to think about.”  And while praise should be given on a regular, ongoing basis, it must be sincere.  Saying something just to do so will sound hollow.  If you can’t find something positive to say, either work harder at it, or perhaps you actually have a problem employee.

Recognition for small things goes a long way towards keeping employees engaged on a day to day basis.  But if you want to motivate your employees to go to an entirely new level, consider combining praise with rewards.  Rewards can range from inexpensive gift cards given on a sporadic basis to larger, more expensive prizes for accomplishing major goals. 

Praise, especially when given publicly, combined with valuable rewards, can excite employees to go beyond their normal duties, to think outside the box, and to take “ownership” of their work.  Now, that’s employee engagement!

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From October 2007 to January 2010, a mere 2.25 years, the face of Facebook changed radically.  It went from being a social media platform populated overwhelmingly (62%) by college students (18-24) to one dominated by the “working class” (those beyond college and out in the workplace).  In 2010, those aged 25-34 totaled 25% of Facebook’s user base and those aged 35-54 totaled 29%, for a grand total of 54% of Facebook’s user base.  And, if you include those over 55, the total is 64% of Facebook’s user base, a complete reversal of demographics.  In just 2 ¼ short years!    

 Here are the stats, direct from Facebook:

While Facebook grew a staggering 515%, from 20 million users to 103 million users, the numbers show a much faster acceleration of growth in the 35-54 demographic, as well as a huge change in the 55+ demographic last year. 

 There are many implications for this shift in Facebook’s user base.  However, one seems to stand out:  everybody is turning to social media. 

 Social media is no longer for the young.  Social media will soon be as ubiquitous as e-mail.

 In 2008, when Facebook, YouTube and MySpace were really beginning to build up a head of steam, many marketers were talking about a coming tsunami based on the age of social media users. The young, they pointed out, were becoming comfortable with the use of social media tools. The tsunami would occur slowly over the years as those young users grew older. Who could have anticipated that the tsunami would occur not over the course of many years, but literally within the span of a few short months? Virtually overnight everyone will be comfortable using social media tools to communicate and collaborate in ways no one has previously anticipated.

 What will this mean for the way companies communicate, not with the outside world, but within? 

It is very possible that the social media communication revolution will change communication patterns as much as or even more so than the Internet and e-mail.

 Businesses have a real opportunity here to  . . . start the conversation.

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