How Green Is My Workplace and Do I Really Care If It Is?

It really runs the gamut in terms of sustainability in the workplace.  Do you feel you know if your workplace has green programs, practices or protocols?  And to what extent do you see them actually followed by your superiors, colleagues and staff?  Does having green initiatives in your place of work make you feel more engaged and enthusiastic about coming in to work, or is simply having a job the most important aspect for you right now in these challenging global economic times?  We’d like your perspective on these topics!

If you don’t feel you know to what extent your workplace is “green”, you are not alone.  This is particularly true in larger organizations where often times “green” really only exists in “greenwashing” for marketing purposes, or there is a large gap between policies and action.  According to the 2008 SHRM Green Workplace Survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), 50 % of surveyed organizations have a formal or informal environmental responsibility policy, but 43 percent have no such policy and no plans to implement one within the following 12 months. 

Australia’s Insync Surveys asked 14,000 survey respondents how green their employers were as of 2008.  Insync’s CEO, James Garriok, stated “promoting environmental efforts is important to attract and retain employees [as well as] customers.  The imminent retirement of the Baby Boomers, which is the group with the lowest expectations of their employer with regard to the environment, means the issue will become more important to the majority of employees.”

Two factors have been identified as having a major impact on the level of expectations relating to greening the workplace: age and education.  Further to the finding that “Boomers” had the lowest expectations, 25-34 year olds are the age group with the highest expectations, substantially higher standards than their younger and older colleagues.  Insync also found that individuals “in jobs requiring a university degree are more critical than others in their assessment of their employer’s environmental performance.”  Professional services firms, which are dominated by people with degrees, are held to higher environmental standards by their staff than manufacturing firms who have a lower level of education per capita.  This is an interesting paradox since professional services firms typically have a smaller environmental impact than other industries. 

No matter what industry you find yourself in, management should be asking what is important to their staff, in the workplace.  There are many studies which prove that an upbeat positive workplace goes hand in hand with productivity and employee commitment.  As such, suggestions from all levels of employees regarding greening the workplace should be encouraged.  And of paramount importance, it must go beyond lip service – companies should be clear about their environmental policies and initiatives, and should report on their progress with these to shareholders and employees alike. 

And for the average person, what can they be doing to help the environmental efforts in their workplace?  Start a recycling program in your kitchen, floor of your building, or even the building where you work as a whole.  A vermicomposter can be a low cost way of turning office kitchen waste into valuable compost.  Using the duplex function when printing documents and, even better, really review the true need for having a hard copy of the document in question – often times, we keep an electronic and hard copy of the same item needlessly.  Replace traditional office garbage cans at each desk to very small ones which hang off individual recycling cans – this step was adopted in the Canadian federal government where “waste” was reduced dramatically and recycling increased exponentially.  Encouraging car pooling to work and promoting the use of bicycles are other ways to help promote environmentally friendlier work environments.  Big or small, every step helps.  Get involved – even small changes have the power to make a large impact when multiplied!

Short URL: http://www.mygreeneducation.com/?p=4603

Posted by SBurke on Oct 18 2009. Filed under Environmental, New Economy, Sustainable Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry