31 July 2008
Employee voice gets louder on sustainability
Coffin maker tops Best Green Companies Awards 2008 list.
Two new surveys show how positive employees – and new MBA graduates – are about corporate social responsibility principles. They want to work for companies sharing these values and new graduates will even accept a lower salary to do so.
Companies not meeting employee needs
Employee research from branding, marketing and research organization Fresh Marketing says employees felt “management in their companies was indifferent at best in supporting staff to gain the knowledge to address sustainability issues.”
Companies were also thought to be particularly bad at communicating their message to shareholders.
Companies were also thought to be particularly bad at communicating their message to shareholders.
Download the 2008 Corporate Sustainability Employee Report.
Salary sacrifice for social conscience
The Stanford Graduate School of Business MBA survey says more than 75% of respondents feel a reputation for ethical conduct and caring employee policies is as important as a job with intellectual challenge and good salary.
Students say they would sacrifice around 15% of their expected salary to work for a company exhibiting all the aspects of social responsibility.
Translating external into internal
Mallon Baker, who initiated the Business Impact Review Group and developed a common approach to CSR reporting, discusses these 2 reports in CSR newswire.
He questions the internal communication aspects of sustainability. “What we haven't seen is much evidence that companies have translated this interest into giving high priority to internal programs to empower employees to contribute to CSR activity, or that they have yet achieved the quality of internal communication that lets employees really know what goes on.”
Greener companies
A unique survey fills this gap with evidence that companies are now looking internally as well as externally to their stakeholders. The Sunday Times newspaper recently announced its “Best Green Companies Awards 2008”.
The results were based on an employee survey that probed for company environmental attitudes and behavior as well as including hard measures such as carbon footprint, waste production and recycling.
J C Atkinson and Son, a small UK coffin manufacturer (see one of its products, pictured), tops the list. It's followed by construction organization Carillion in second place overall, while the Co-operative Financial Services comes third.
Read about the 70-person coffin manufacturer.
Environmental issues high on the agenda
The awards are based on research by 2 Munro Global companies, market research organizations FDS International and Maven Research.
Will Ullstein of Munro Global says the survey shows how deeply environmental issues have permeated companies. “It provides a benchmark for corporate environmental performance as well as identifying what staff are thinking and what action they're taking on the shop floor," he says.
Sustainability awards for construction
Carillion won the “Large and Medium-Sized Company” category to come second overall. The company is proud of its many sustainability awards and says, “We believe that becoming a more sustainable business will help us become a more successful business.”
In 2007, thousands of people used their handprint to pledge involvement with a local charity, recycle more, waste less and cut down on car journeys. “The handprint theme has been adopted to promote sustainability issues across the group ever since,” Carrillion says.
In 2007 Carillion was one of The Observer newspaper's top 20 most ethical UK firms.
Is "sustainable" profitable?
Companies committed to sustainable practices believe they're essential to long-term business value, and greener companies are more likely to win public and private sector tendering contracts. Examples of some companies' CSR practices:
Dell is trying to maintain a competitive advantage by being 'greener' than competitors.
- IBM saved US$17.8 million in a year by asking staff to turn off equipment and lights not in use.
- BP saved US$650 million over 4 years by reducing factory CO2 emissions.
- Barclays canned its corporate screen saver on company computer monitors, and scooped £1m in energy savings.
- New computer systems, such as "follow me" printers that re-route and manage print jobs, also make best use of resources and reduce waste.
- Dell is trying to maintain a competitive advantage by being “greener” than competitors.
- Ethical funds are attracting environmentally conscious investors – for example, the UK’s Marks & Spencer has launched an ethical fund, as have HSBC and ABN Amro.
Employees would probably agree with Henry David Thoreau. "What's the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"
Have your say
Are you involved with your organization’s sustainability program? Does your company have good sustainability stories that aren't being heard internally?
Many companies are working on sustainability – and facing external stakeholder groups to convince them the company is operating to protect the environment. But how often are these stories heard internally?
Could your employees be feeling your company is doing little that impacts the environment, unaware of the efforts being made?
Discuss these issues with other comms practitioners by joining the Internal Comms Hub members' group on the Communicators' Network.
Recommended resources:
Making the connection between employees and CSR
A communicator's guide to Generation Y
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