More and more companies are starting to care for the environment, and this is one area to which we can all contribute. Can you get your company to recycle paper? To use less electricity or water? To save on fuel or other resources? To start buying more environmentally friendly products? Make yourself heard, start a campaign, enlist support. Go green!
What’s really cool is that companies are learning that being environmentally friendly actually makes them MORE money. Interface, the world’s largest manufacturer of carpets, designed and manufactured a new kind of carpet that was environmentally friendly, and while the design and production of this new product was more expensive than their regular line, it instantly became a bestseller and has made the company a fortune.
Ray Anderson, the CEO of Interface, had a rude awakening about the way his company had been polluting, saying:
It dawned on me that they way I’d been running Interface is the way of the plunderer. Plundering something that is not mine, something that belongs to every creature on earth.
So I said to myself “My goodness, some day people like me will end up in jail.”
Another great example is Patagonia who make outdoor wear and mountain climbing gear, donate 1% of their revenue or 10% of their profits, whichever is greater, to environmental causes chosen by their employees.
But aside from financial gains, I believe that being environmentally focused has one other huge benefit for companies today: It makes employees happy. Here are five reasons why.
5: It gives us a sense of pride
Knowing that your work made a group of already wealthy investors a little richer may not be a huge source of personal pride, but knowing that your work made the world a little cleaner, or the environment a little safer or helped reduce C02 emissions can be.
Working for a company that has not only a positive bottom line but also a positive impact on the world feels good and makes us happy at work.
4: It creates a stronger bond with the company
Having that sense of pride means we can more easily identify with the company and feel like we belong there. This also contributes to happiness at work.
3: Employees can take action
Corporate environmental initiatives always work best when employees can involve themselves directly. Patagonia for instance, lets employees take time off work to work on environmental projects, and taking action for something you believe in, makes you happy.
2: We make a positive difference
It also lets us make a difference. If employees can get involved where they are and contribute to the environment through their ideas, energy, knowledge, skills or passion, they can contribute actively to a worthy cause.
1: It’s the right thing to do
It is just not right for companies to consume more natural resources than strictly necessary. It is not right to pollute, when there are other non-toxic ways to produce. Working for an organization that gets this, and chooses to do the right thing, rather than the easy thing, makes us happy at work.
So companies that take the environment seriously can not only make more money, they can also make their employees happy at work and reap all the benefits that happy workplaces experience, like increased innovation, better customer service and higher profits!
So try it out in your workplace: What could YOU do for the environment?
This post is part of the Blog Action Day
Leave a Reply