How to embed sustainability within your workforce

 Editor’s note: The first part of this series focused on increasing employee engagement on sustainability.

This is the second installment in a three-part series on employee engagement. The first installment introduced the four stages of employee engagement and how companies with sustainability programs that are built upon high employee engagement perform better. This installment will discuss the first stage: increasing your employees’ awareness and understanding of sustainability (not only what it means to your organization, but also what it means to them) — and provide examples of how companies build an understanding of sustainability across diverse employee bases through communication, training and visual engagement.

Best Buy: Sustainability amidst turmoil

Best Buy has made headlines this year, and not the kind that any company wants:

Best Buy Cutting 50 Stores to Get Profitable. Good luck with that. (Forbes)

Best Buy CEO Resigns Under Cloud (Minneapolis StarTribune)

Best Buy Suffers For Lack of a Plan (New York Times)

Best Buy in Turmoil: Will It Survive? (Forbes, again)

The four stages of engaging employees on sustainability

 As a speaker at the recent Sustainability Leadership Forums in New York and Chicago, I had the opportunity to talk about ways employee engagement benefits corporations, from increasing employee retention and satisfaction, to positive financial impact. In fact, companies with sustainability programs built upon high employee engagement perform better and provide tangible upside to both the employees and the company,

Are product sustainability programs at a tipping point?

Over the last few months I’ve had a chance to speak to a large number of senior business, EH&S and sustainability leaders at a variety of Fortune 500 ERM clients about product sustainability and what it means to their organizations. What resonated in these conversations is that designing and implementing product sustainability programs at an enterprise level is now a strategic imperative for many companies. This was a consistent theme across many different market sectors and was being driven by the belief that a product sustainability program could create significant business value for their organizations.