by Ben Kellard, 27th May 2009
Reposted extract from: Forum for the Future

How can you embed sustainability in a way that motivates employees? It’s a challenge for many leaders faced with the question of how to maintain the momentum of their sustainability strategy, especially in a recession.

The case for using sustainability to motivate employees is compelling. There’s a strong correlation between activities which come under the umbrella of corporate responsibility and employee satisfaction and engagement, according to the latest Sunday Times Best Companies survey.

And research from the Hay Group shows that highly engaged employees can improve business performance by up to 30% and that fully engaged employees are 2.5 times more likely to exceed performance expectations than their “disengaged” colleagues.
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A good example of this is property company Gentoo, which launched ‘Gentoo Green’, an internal programme to engage employees in its sustainability vision and strategy. The programme was backed by the CEO and was supported by internal communications, champions, training, and opportunities for employees to get involved. This led to over 700 suggestions from employees about how to improve Gentoo’s sustainability performance, and it’s been estimated that the programme has already delivered half a million pounds in savings to the group in its first year.
Continue reading ‘Sustainability – how to engage employees’