How do you have your people aligning themselves with corporate sustainability initiatives and helping to create a more sustainable business from their position in the organisation?  

I am delivering a two to three hour Orientation to Sustainability in partnership with Great Performance Group which does this and more.  The workshop-based training delivers cultural alignment with sustainability initiatives and targets whilst also meeting ISO 14001 training needs.

Real results include cultural breakthroughs in sustainability and business performance, teamwork, productivity and effectiveness, communication, adherence with organisational policies and procedures, word-of-mouth marketing, and all the benefits that come with improved employee engagement.

At Schiphol Airport twenty people from a cross-section of the organisation have been trained to deliver the 3-hour sustainability orientation to all 2,000 employees. The purpose is to raise awareness, encourage new actions and behaviours, co-ordinate corporate responsibility projects across the business, and offer employees the opportunity to participate in them. The journey was launched with the CEO, Board and Top 80 executives in November 2010, and the training process began in 2011.  

At Alliance Cleaning the process has been used to engage management, office staff and key cleaning operatives in the people, profit and planet of sustainability.  The Directors developed a new mission and vision around sustainability, and the orientations have been the vehicle to engage employees, drive new behaviours, provide the context for new levels of performance and management, and ultimately change the culture of the organisation.  As a result the organisation the organisation has become the world's first to offer a carbon neutral cleaning service to its clients.

How it works

The approach works by making sustainability (or corporate responsibility) personal, engaging and accessible.

• Personal, because Sustainability needs to be a value based conversation.  This means going about the business in a way that is shared, owned and felt by the individuals at any level rather than a slogan crafted in the boardroom and stuck on the office walls.
• Engaging, because you need your people’s brains and hands to create and implement all the subsequent projects and initiatives that will make your journey a real cultural change rather than just a “PR exercise”.
• Accessible, because somehow you need to create the momentum where all the levels in your organization are able to communicate effectively with each other, participate in, and promote the ideas and changes you are embarking on.