Creating a Cycle of Employee Engagement with
Incentives
By Mary Modney
July 21st, 2010 - Sustainability initiatives
within large companies can increase profits by 38 percent,
according to 2010 study by the National Environmental Education
Foundation (NEEF). [See The Business Case for Environmental and
Sustainability Employee Education.] And in order to have a successful
sustainability initiative, employees must be involved and
engaged.
But how do you do this? How do you engage employees in something
that, for most, is not part of their job function? And, worse, how
do you engage the 71 percent of employees that a Gallup study shows
are not actively engaged?
Many are turning to environmental education to do just the
trick. Companies are attempting to motivate employees to do the
"right," or sustainable, thing when at work by increasing
environmental and sustainability education and awareness.
Take Johnson & Johnson, for example. The pharmaceutical
tycoon with nearly 120,000 employees worldwide has created
environmental literacy programs to change the employees' viewpoint
or feelings toward the environmental with hopes that this knowledge
will translate to action within the workplace.
In fact, 92 percent of its facilities implemented a literacy
campaign in 2007, according to the company's website. Johnson &
Johnson does not formally track the results of these efforts, other
than receiving anecdotal feedback, but claims "great success among
employees." The program is centered around discussing "successes
and progress and going after their hearts a bit," as reported to
NEEF.
But what happens when trying to change employees' opinions and
feelings toward the environment does not work? When grasping at
heart strings leaves you empty handed? When education and awareness
does not influence them to walk out the front door a wasteful
worker one day and return a staunch environmental steward the
next?
Though environmental and sustainability
education is an integral piece to fulfilling the corporate social
responsibility puzzle, it seems it may not be enough. The truth is
some employees might feel morally compelled to act, but most will
not.
There are two main drivers for sustainable action: The first is
moral obligation, and on the flip side, the second is a
self-serving-or "what's in it for me"-reasoning. One best practice
that has been shown effective is to complement education with
incentives to engage a diverse workforce with varying levels of
engagement and social consciousness.
And surprisingly enough, employees may just be hoping for such a
program. A series of Towers Watkins studies on employee engagement
and incentives revealed what drives employee engagement and what
drives employees away. One such study found 65 percent of employees
were seeking more frequent communication about reward and benefit
programs.
What's more, most companies were said to find such rewarding
practices advantageous, but three specific types of organizations
were shown to reap the greatest performance benefits:
• Those with weak employee performance
• Those undergoing cultural change (merger or
acquisition, layoffs)
• Those with a focus on people, in general
Considering human capital goes hand-in-hand with companies
looking to become more sustainable, as they will need to address
PEOPLE, planet and profits. It could be said then that
sustainable-minded companies will have some of the greatest success
implementing an incentive plan for employee engagement.
An example of such a company is organic yogurt company
Stonyfield Farms. From day one, the company has taken commendable
steps to include the planet in their business plan. But in 2008,
they knew that they needed to do more to decrease energy
consumption in their facilities. The company needed to reward their
employees for engagement in sustainable practices. The incentive
plan was simple: The amount of money saved from decreased usage was
tied directly to paycheck bonuses. And the proof is in the pudding,
or in Stonyfield's case, yogurt: They decreased their usage by more
than 22 percent that year, as reported to NEEF.
Prior to the employee engagement incentive plan, the company had
found that 10 percent of its employees were managing 95 percent of
their environmental impact. The incentive plan seemed to pull in
the rest of the workforce. It just goes to show that even the most
sustainable companies can find success with incentives: engaging
some by pulling heart strings and engaging others by answering
"what's in it for me?"
Mary Modney, is
Editor-in-Chief, GreenNurture. Follow
her tweets at @OrganicJournlst
and @GreenNurture, and
read more about the business case for sustainability on the GreenNurture
blog.
This article was first published in the Green Economy Post and is reprinted here with
the kind permission of the author.