About six months ago we predicted companies striving to promote sustainability in internal communication as well as in their public relations a larger pool of applicants. The line of argumentation in a nutshell: when a company gets involved in environmental protection and encourages its employees to join the common effort, it fosters motivation, improves the corporate image and presents itself as an attractive employer to job applicants. The renowned online magazine GreenBiz.com investigated the question why employees should be part of any green solution. The conclusion is quite similar to ours but in addition it comes up with alternative measures and interesting side effects.

GreenBiz editor Kevin Moss takes up on the topic of an article recently published by the US-American National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) which was founded in 1990 as an initiative of the Congress and can look back on 20 years of successful work. NEEF has made it its goal to foster environmental literacy of private individuals and companies as well as making environmental protection and sustainable actions a topic in schools via learning programmes. According to Moss it is especially the economic sector which could benefit substantially by implementing environmentally friendly measures: ‘… these business benefits include improving operational efficiency, strengthening customer and community relations, innovation, supply chain management, and attracting and retraining employees.’ Besides the already mentioned positive effects within the company, the NEEF sees the possibility to improve customer and neighbour relations (corporate image), feature the company’s innovative potential, and increase the efficiency in everyday business and company supply.

So far studies had not focussed on establishing whether those measures had an influence on the employees in their private life, too. After all, it can be assumed that environmental protection does not end at the office door or the factory gates. Now Moss states that employees who have participated in environmental education programmes and as a result have changed their behaviour can influence clients, customers, and colleagues positively. In addition, the gained knowledge is frequently implemented at home as well. Companies like British Telecom or Hewlett Packard support their employees with funding programmes, for instance when they install a solar system on their roofs. It goes without saying that when it comes to communicating ecological measures in the company, coherency and authenticity are the basis for success – just like in all fields of communication. It is not least the above mentioned examples that elucidate this fact. After all it is only natural that plans which have been realized evoke the public’s appreciation and esteem rather than plans which have merely been communicated.

‘What would you think of an IT company building a solar installation on top of an inefficiently run data center?’ asks the author’s rhetorically to show in the following that such incoherent and ill-conceived measures are nothing out of the ordinary in everyday business life: ‘…this is a plausible scenario in the absence of the involvement and coordinated efforts of employees throughout the company.’ If colleagues had been encouraged to share their ideas and opinions, the effort could have been implemented more efficiently. There are detailed statistics on the degree US-American companies involve their employees in implementing environmentally friendly measures. The Employee Engagement Survey published by the online project ‘Brighter Planet’ in February confirms that an ‘encouragingly large number of organizations are already taking steps to engage their employees in their sustainability goals.’ However, just 14 per cent of the companies have formalized their efforts into company policy. According to the study, this may be due to the fact that for many companies public marketing and employee retention is their primary motivation behind sustainability programmes. No need to say that this attitude has little to do with authenticity or sustainability. Kevin Moss himself offers a great bottom line: ‘However, we still have work to do.’ So what are we waiting for?

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