2Sustain

Does your company engage employees in sustainability initiatives as part of its comprehensive CSR program?

Many companies do. And yet, across the broader business community, not much is known about how these initiatives are administered and exactly how popular they have become.

Earlier this month, Brighter Planet released results of a new study that offers valuable insights about these issues. The 38-page report, Employee Engagement Survey: An Analysis of the Extent and Nature of Employee Sustainability Programs, attachments compiles the results of  1055 individual responses to a survey conducted in November 2009. This sample reflects a diverse set of respondents in terms of job role, employer size, industry sector, and geography (responses represented 44 states and the District of Columbia).

Here are a few key findings:

• More than 85 percent of respondents said their organization promotes employee sustainability in some arena. For example, 75 percent of respondents said their employer actively promotes recycling. More half said their office encourages energy conservation. (This should be higher, considering energy efficiency is low hanging fruit with significant ROI.) And, more than 40 percent said their organization promotes ways to reduce the impact of commuting. Less than 15 percent, however, said their employer had an employee sustainability engagement policy.

• Over half (52 percent) of respondents considered their employers’ initiatives somewhat effective at changing employee behavior. Only 14 percent  thought they were very effective.

• Communication about sustainability issues and initiatives is clearly lacking. More than one quarter (27 percent) of respondents did not know whether their employer had an employee engagement policy on sustainability, and about one-third (32 percent) said their company never shared sustainability goals and strategies with employees.

• Among survey participants that publicly share their sustainability efforts, 59 percent said they did so for the purpose of sales and marketing. 46 percent said employee recruitment and retention was a key driver. Obviously, companies see sustainability initiatives as a means to gain competitive advantage.

• Brighter Planet found that the organizations setting the bar for success of employee engagement programs tend to be smaller and in the environmental, energy, or manufacturing sectors. Not surprisingly, they also tend to have strong upper-level sustainability leadership and promote high levels of communication and participation among employees.

Check out the full report for more details, including the attributes of effective programs (frequent, consistent communication and the use of social media, e.g.).

As the report concludes:

Overall, the results of this survey reinforce a small but growing theory of the importance of employee activation as a key part of an organization’s sustainability strategy. The idea of employee engagement is becoming widely recognized, but while some organizations are leading the wave with broad and sophisticated formal policies most are undertaking only mod¬est and unofficial initiatives. As more support for the benefits of employee action surface, these programs are sure to advance in size, frequency and effectiveness.