Did you know? Just one tradeshow can have the same C02 footprint as one year of powering everyday office equipment and supplies? 

We all know that too much C02 in the environment is bad, how do we find out how much carbon dioxide we produce? 

Benchmarking success in green living or business starts with closing the gap between awareness and action.  Here's where the tried and true adage applies: "What gets measured, gets managed." While expressed more frequently in a business setting, it applies to our personal lives as well.  For instance, if you want to lose weight, first you have to know how much you weigh to benchmark your success.  Similarly, in living a sustainable lifestyle, you first need to know the areas of your environmental impacts to measure your success.  

Carbon calculators offer visibility to reduce emissions, but consistently taking eco action to reduce impacts can be overwhelming.  What if there was a quick, easy and long-lasting way to make a difference?  Is offsetting the answer?  From our sustainability consulting perspective, offsetting is not a substitute for reducing or eliminating emissions or other environmental impacts.  However, there is a time and a place for carbon offsetting.  

• Offsetting can be a partial solution that complements other approaches,
• Offsetting can be seen as part of maintaining the balance of life,
• Carbon offsets offers a path to eco action and raises eco awareness,
• Offsetting schemes can be used as an interim measure until other solutions are developed – efficient emission-free fuels and renewable energy sources.

What options are available for offsetting?  Introducing the Green Air Project.  GAP is a social enterprise that helps individuals and businesses offset their carbon footprints in the most sustainable and positive way- by planting trees.  As you know, at Taiga Company, we love trees!  

Why choose Green Air Project? 

• Business Sustainability: Green Air Project's offsetting of carbon dioxide by planting large numbers of trees is a viable option to a businesses' corporate sustainability plan. The program can also aid in increasing employee engagement and retention with employee participation. 
• Transparency:  Clients and other stakeholders have access to a businesses' sustainability strategies with a company-specific website and code to track how many trees have planted.
• Affordable: Businesses, individuals and families can all participate and benefit.  At $10.00/ tree, enough to offset the average American’s CO2 emissions for a month, the trees are professionally cared for including: tree- Lease and preparation of the land, professionally planting the trees, maintenance/weed control, making fire lines and maintaining them on the property, security, boundary maintenance, surveying of land and forestry service to manage the land. 

Green Air Project's offsetting of carbon dioxide by planting large numbers of trees is an easy to grasp sustainability concept for eco curious individuals and stakeholders.  Demonstrate your commitment to sustainability by taking sustainable leadership and eco action.  Visit Green Air Project website today to get started. 

According to The New York Times article, Trapped in the Middle Seat , corporate travel is on the rise.  Companies are emerging from the economic downturn by taking to the air to rebuild and grow their businesses.  However, this activity is not completely free from the restraint.  The all-seeing and watchful eye of corporate cost control is always present!

“More businesspeople are traveling, but companies are being tighter with their budgets. Travelers increasingly have to justify their trips, and trips have to be approved by more managers. They have to perform the equivalent of a return-on-investment analysis before they book.”  - Henry H. Harteveldt, Atmosphere Research Group.

With the rising cost of travel, our sustainability consulting sees an opportunity to leverage technology and sustainability concepts to address travel needs.  In fact, a Market Research Media report reveals that the virtual conference marketplace will grow over the next five years. Why?  Because, sustainable businesses looking to cut costs, increase productivity, and reduce their environmental impacts are turning to virtual conferencing and webinar technology. 

"The need for face-to-face meetings is always going to exist -however you will see a lot more virtual interactions.  Businesses are getting more and more comfortable with the virtual world. Their customers, employees and partners are already living in that environment thanks to social networks and even email.” -Sharat Sharan, founder ON24

While the traditional discussion around virtual meetings often centers on carbon output from commercial air travel, a larger and more sustainable business perspective introduces business savings as an aligned incentive to the environmental benefits.  At Taiga Company, we seek out opportunities to leverage the array of technologies and social media engagement tools that are connecting the global business world.

Spring into Eco Action with Earth Day & Bike Month Sharing the Green Love!  Earth Day Resources ~ Blogs we Love SustainAbility CSR for HR ValueStreaming Guardian Sustainabililty blog Strategic Sustainability blog  Earth Day Education ~ Websites we Love  Earth Day Network Earth911 GoodGuide Center for Climate Change and Solutions Carbon Disclosure Project Earth Day Leaders ~ Corporate Blogs SAP Intel  IBM Earth Day 2012  Earth Day Wishes ~ What are yours? At Taiga Company, we make Earth Day everyday by inspiring others to eco action. Reflecting on the words of Nelson Mandela, "As we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same."  This Earth Day, be creative! LIve bold! Commit to eco action - live your green dreams inspiring others to do the same. As an Earth Day Special, our recently launched, Social Media for Sustainability Professionals online course, is offered with a coupon! Why? As consumers, employees, businesses, communities, and non government organizations increasingly question business actions on climate change, they want to see transparent, more credible information on the responsible actions companies are taking to address their social and environmental impacts. Social media is a medium that offers transparent, always on engagement facilitating the probation of sustainability communications.   Get the details here!

The easiest ways to promote sustainability include leading by example and sharing in community.  

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Because most adults spend a majority of their waking hours at work, a sustainable working environment is critical.  The work site, organizational culture and working environment are powerful influences on behavior.   A component of increasing employee engagement has been wellness programs.  Traditionally, they have been used as instruments to address weight reduction, reduced stress levels, improved physical fitness, health, and well being.  Until recently, corporate wellness programs have been a "nice to have" program.  However, new trends point to wellness programs as "must have" programs as success evaluations of these programs are shifting.  

Traditional evaluations of wellness programs as part of employee engagement strategies have focused on ROI.  Yet to qualify the ROI for wellness programs has been elusive.  There are some notable metrics as mentioned by Elaine Cohen, author of the CSR for HR, “It is estimated that employers spend $13 billion annually on the total cost of obesity. Approximately 9.1% of all health care costs in the United States are related to obesity and overweight. Workplace obesity prevention and control programs can be an effective way for employers to reduce obesity. They can produce a direct financial return on investment (ROI) by lowering health care costs, lowering absenteeism, and increasing employee productivity.” 

However, because financial indicators  of success can be difficult to ascertain, many experts in the field are arguing that VOI (value on investment) is the more comprehensive and inclusive metric because it can be self-defined by the company to include attributes that are important to their own business success.  For instance, in addition to improvements in health care costs and reduction of healthcare claims, a VOI for a company might include recruitment and retention rates, measures of morale, quality-of-life indicators and absenteeism metrics. 

Worksite wellness and sustainability are linked: 

• Enhanced recruitment and retention of healthy employees
• Reduced health care costs
• Decreased rates of illness and injuries
• Reduced employee absenteeism
• Improved employee relations and morale
• Increased productivity 

In as much as worksite wellness is becoming more on the norm and less of the exception, so too is business sustainability.  By providing employees with wellness programs not only provides access to improved health, but it also demonstrates corporate social responsibility. Sustainable business strategies embedded in the core operations of a business captures the benefits a wellness program aims to make and more.   As with any successful program, leadership is critical as is participation and engagement.   Unite wellness programs with the corporate sustainability plan to engage your workforce. 

“When it comes to energy and the environment, most people want to do the right thing. But how many people actually contribute to improving energy use and environmental impact is another story.”

This quote from the GreenBiz post, How Businesses Can Use Games to Spur Greener Behavior, speaks to the heart of most business sustainability concept implementations: transforming thought into action.  Focusing on employee action, the article offers a light-hearted approach to stakeholder engagement.  By applying principals of gaming in a traditional business setting, many companies have already witnessed great success in increased eco awareness.  

Research reveals that leading business sustainability companies place an emphasis on sustainability as an integrated business process change consistent with economic recovery business improvement.  As we have discussed frequently, the key is to create alignment.  The GreenBiz article poses several questions:

• How do we obtain enough information to compare to our peers?
• How do we define the intrinsic and extrinsic rewards to spur action?
• Is your organization driven by social pressures or internal drivers?

Our sustainability consulting finds the gap between awareness and action is often the biggest challenge in the implementation of any change.  In terms of business sustainability progress, the action step represents the single largest opportunity.  We spend a considerable amount of time exploring avenues to accelerate global eco awareness into true impactful business action.  

The concept of gaming presented in the above article may offer one method.  Combined with other social media engagement strategies, your company could not only raise the eco awareness of its business sustainability stakeholders but motivate action.  Visit us at Taiga Company to learn more.

A common held belief is that employees with a vested interest in the success of the company become much more aligned with the goals of the organization. Therefore, how could linking business sustainability concepts to employee success support both interests?  Our sustainability consulting investigates.

Scanning a recent GreenBiz article, 5 Ways to Boost Employee Engagement, we find complementary evidence to our own believes around stakeholder engagement value.  Focusing specifically on the negative impacts of a disengaged workforce, the post offers some helpful tips based on research findings.  

• Connect employees with the people they serve: Interaction increases empathy for customers, motivating employees to do a better job serving them. 

• Get personal: Employees who know their manager well “as a person” are more likely to be engaged. 

• Allow employees to help colleagues via employee support programs: Employees who support co-workers in need experience increased commitment to the organization. 

• Commit to corporate social responsibility (CSR): Research shows that employees who are satisfied with the organization’s commitment to social and environmental responsibilities demonstrate more commitment, engagement and productivity. 

• Invest in workplace wellness: Employer-sponsored programs that support employees in adopting behaviors that reduce their health risks and improve their quality of life -- also known as wellness programs -- raise engagement levels and directly impact the bottom line. 

Business sustainability presents the unique opportunity to increase profitability, gain and maintain a competitive advantage over one’s peers, and create meaningful work for your employees.   The key is in value alignment.  How can organizational values and employee values find common ground?   Our sustainability consulting offers information, resources and tools to build stakeholder engagement strategies into a business sustainability plan.

With new tools and strategies changing the way the business world communicates and exchanges information, social media is becoming the transparent, engaging, competitive advantage that business sustainability delivers.   However, to effectively harness the power of social media to create business sustainability value, our sustainability consulting explores the key components for success.

The GreenBiz post, Building a Global Brain to Solve Sustainability Puzzles, summarizes an evolved concept of ‘corporate communications’ discussed at a recent business sustainability conference in Washington DC.  Expanding social media engagement beyond the simple spread of information, today’s social business leaders ask: how do we take collective intelligence a step further.

"We're facing some pretty big problems in the world today.  And the way we've been tackling them has struggled to keep up.  The idea of pooling minds and resources holds great promise for sustainability.”  -Tim O'Reilly 

Our sustainability consulting practice believes that social media engagement tools offer an evolved approach to stakeholder participation.  By expanding the scope of contributors and encouraging increased feedback, a decision maker opens the ‘suggestion box’ to a variety of untapped view points. In building an active social media engagement strategy, there are several things to consider:

• Begin with a Clear Vision:  What are your social media goals?  Is it to increase website/ blog traffic? Promote brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics?  Clearly identify your traditional sales objectives combined with your sustainability metrics and design a social media marketing strategy that delivers results to both. 

• Identify Stakeholders and Online Communities:  Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify, but online communities can be centered theme based and centered on sustainability concepts such as recycling, CSR, water, energy, social investing.  Or, they may be geographically based.  Consider shareholders, partners, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and NGO's. 

• Social Media is an ‘Always-On’ Platform: This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into products, services, and ongoing dialog.

Social media success is no longer a defined by how well your company communicates its message to the external world.  It is rapidly becoming a critical business sustainability skill and a business sustainability catalyst that is affecting the bottom line.  Our sustainability consulting offers social media for sustainability tools to assess the market, your competition, and your own efforts in the social space around your business.  Visit with us at Taiga Company to learn more.

Is there a reason to do employee engagement right?  In fact, are there dangers of a disengaged workforce?  Some would argue low employee morale, broken culture, loss of productivity and unmet performance objectives as symptoms of a disengaged workforce.  Engagement begins with what an organization values.  Where do employees rank among business sustainability stakeholders? Who is ultimately responsible for their engagement?  And how do they directly contribute to your business success?

In an attempt to answer these questions, our sustainability consulting focuses it attention on the post, Employee Engagement: Why Do It If You Can’t Do it Right?.  Contained within, an Environmental Leader guest writer and professional consultant explores the relationship between employee engagement and company success.  

“Leaders who are embracing employee engagement as a tool for supporting their sustainability efforts would be well advised to think through why they desire employee engagement, what they are trying to achieve, and how they intend to carry it out.”

Providing us with some insight, a recent GreenBiz article, 5 Companies, 5 Different Takes on Employee Engagement, discusses the many faces and complexities of a stakeholder engagement strategy.  Specific to employee engagement, the post cites are a number of motivating factors which drive today’s companies.  Some of the noted examples in the article include:  

• Encourage a Public Commitment: Motivate personal sustainability practices in support of a business sustainability pledge.

• Define a Shared Vision:  Encourage specific business sustainability action.

• Provide Personalized Data: Help employees understand their individual sustainability opportunities through personalize participatory information.

• Expand a Corporate Initiative: Foster personal development opportunities through specific business sustainability programs.

• Nurture a New Method: Create energy and enthusiasm in the workplace.

As our sustainability has frequently discussed, business sustainability presents the unique opportunity to increase profitability, gain and maintain a competitive advantage over the competition, and create meaningful work in the process.   This belief is supported by the above stakeholder engagement strategies which find a common thread in value alignment.  When you consider what other businesses have achieved through employee-inspired and driven leadership, can you foresee opportunities within your own organization?  Our professional consulting at Taiga Company works with clients to enable employees to leverage their eco awareness and take inspired business sustainability actions for the benefit of the organization.  When employees feel educated, inspired and empowered, the real magic can begin.

“As many of us are wrapping up our 2012 budgeting and planning process, one thing continues to worry even the most seasoned senior executives: Market Volatility. Twenty-eleven has been a year in which volatility reached historic levels, and one in which even the most experienced of global investors increasingly worried about risk as the year progressed. In this kind of market even the best spiked egg nog may have difficulty calming the fears of the investment community.  Innovation executives can’t help but worry about how the broader investment climate will affect their 2012 innovation plans.”

This excerpt was taken from the recent post, Innovation Planning in Turbulent Times, which captures the impacts of the recession on business through the actions of several global leaders.  Highlighting the links between innovation and business success, the article describes how these “super giants” viewed turbulence as opportunity.  Our sustainability takes note of this success and the post-recessionary insight:

• Improve satisfaction with your innovation investments
• Identify the breakthrough trends impacting your industry
• Optimize your portfolio to better balance breakthrough and incremental innovation
• Reduce the risk of your innovation investments

Through our direct involvement with companies and business leaders seeking to define creative and sustainable solutions within their organization, we find that aligned and motivated stakeholders  are a ripe source for new ideas. Thus, our sustainability consulting works with clients to step outside of the confines of the business to leverage employees, suppliers, and end consumer thinking.   

Taiga Company  subscribes to the belief that a focused social media engagement strategy can ensure that business sustainability concepts and innovative solutions naturally find their way into new product developments within your company.  Our sustainability consulting offers information and resources to business and individuals at every level of this stakeholder engagement evolution.

As consumers, employees, businesses, communities, and non government organizations increasingly question business actions on climate change, they want to see transparent, more credible information on the responsible actions companies are taking to address their social and environmental impacts. Social media is a medium that offers transparent, always on engagement facilitating the probation of sustainability communications.

Our newest product, Social Media for Sustainability Professionals  is an online, self-guided course that will deliver practical information you need to:

• Develop and promote your brand
• Establish credibility and improve online visibility
• Promote thought leadership
• Engage with interested stakeholder groups
• Drive targeted traffic to your website or blog
• Develop direct relationships with prospects, clients, influencers in the sustainability / CSR space

Need help in deciding if the course is for you?   Perhaps these additional post can offer guidance or give us a call, ask questions on twitter or catch up with us on Facebook.   

• Sustainability Professionals: How to Express Yourself with Social Media  
• Green Websites that Inspire Eco Action form the Inside Out 
• Who are the Tweeps Tweeting for A Better Green Brand?  
• Twitter, Facebook, and Blogging: The Three Pillars of Sustainability Communications? 
• LinkedIn: Powering Sustainability Professionals and Revolutionizing Volunteerism 
• Conversion: Using Calls to Action to Promote Sustainability 
• 8 Ways to Use Sustainability News and Distribution Networks to Promote Sustainability 
• Beyond the Social Media Basics: Sustainability Communications on YouTube, Google +, and Foursquare 

The use of social media collaboration technologies can help organizations break down silos and facilitate knowledge sharing across business units, corporate functions and stakeholders. Social media provides individuals, communities, businesses, and non-government organizations the ability to connect with business in meaningful discussion from anywhere in the world in real time.   As a result, many businesses have already realized value by incorporating social media into traditional business processes including marketing, sales, PR, customer support, and product development. What are the key ingredients for social media success?

Our sustainability consulting practice believes that social media engagement tools offer an evolved approach to stakeholder participation.  By expanding the scope of contributors and encouraging increased feedback, a decision maker opens the ‘suggestion box’ to a variety of untapped view points. In building an active social media engagement strategy, there are several things to consider:

Begin with a Clear Vision:  What are your social media goals?  Is it to increase website/ blog traffic? Promote brand image and credibility? Communicate and engage on CSR/ sustainability related topics?  Clearly identify your traditional sales objectives combined with your sustainability metrics and design a social media marketing strategy that delivers results to both. 

Identify Stakeholders and Online Communities:  Stakeholders are a bit easier to identify, but online communities can be centered theme based and centered on sustainability concepts such as recycling, CSR, water, energy, social investing.  Or, they may be geographically based.  Consider shareholders, partners, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and NGO's. 

Social Media is an ‘Always-On’ Platform: This implies being present to the ongoing conversation: listening, contributing to the conversation, providing timely feedback, and incorporating that information into products, services, and ongoing dialog.

The propagation of sustainable information to effectively communicate business sustainability successes is becoming a more active dialog.  Stakeholder feedback is being used to solve problems and drive innovation.  Our sustainability consulting believes that in order to be effective with social media for sustainability, an organization must have a defined engagement strategy.  At Taiga Company , we encourage clients to build sustainability programs that leverage social media engagement tools to implement direct and measurable impacts on social, environmental, and economic goals.  

A common characteristic across sustainable organizations is the ability to recognize public eco awareness and deliver new products that address societal and environmental challenges in a way that delivers business sustainability and long term value.  However, questions still remain unanswered on the most effective way to harness and drive creativity in an increasingly transparent but equally competitive world.

The Harvard Business Review recently weighed in on the “open” debate with its post, Open Innovation and Organizational Boundaries.  Commenting that today’s markets are being transformed into social forums, the article offers some key concepts to consider:

• Leaders and senior teams can take advantage of contrasting innovation modes, paradoxical organizational requirements, and associated dynamic boundaries.

• Leaders need to execute strategic choices with the systems, structures, incentives, cultures, and boundaries tailored to open and firm-based innovation modes.

• Multiple types of boundaries will increasingly be employed to manage innovation. These boundaries will range from traditional intra firm boundaries to complex intra firm boundaries (such as ambidextrous designs), to webs of interdependence with partners, and to interdependence with potentially anonymous communities.

• Senior teams must build their own personal capabilities to deal with contradictions as well as their firm's ability to deal with contradictions. While building internally contradictory organizational architectures is difficult, building these architectures to attend to contrasting innovation modes will be more challenging.

Through our direct engagement with companies and business leaders seeking to inspire and motivate sustainable action in their organization, we find business stakeholders as a valued source for new ideas. Our professional consulting works with clients to step outside of the confines of the business to leverage employee, supplier, and end consumer thinking.  

Taiga Company offers insight into business sustainability programs and social media strategies designed to encourage business sustainability and expand eco awareness as an asset of the organization - particularly through stakeholder engagement and open innovation.

In a recent post, Skills Shortages Threaten to Dent Corporate Growth, Smart Planet presents the findings from the latest Price Waterhouse Cooper (PWC) CEO survey.  While the research predicts an increase in corporate headcount, most business leaders surveyed fear that they may be unable to retain their key skill sets.

“Future prospects for the US economy are unlikely to improve without a long-term solution to talent shortages that exist today.  Even in a weak labor market, more than 40% of US CEOs say their talent-related expenses rose more than expected, a reflection of the acute skills mismatch problem they face: talent shortages amid high unemployment.”

To meet the challenges of a competitive job market, progressive business leaders are focused on retaining their organization’s existing sustainable competencies rather than simply acquiring new skills.  Our sustainability consulting finds many talent managers are utilizing internal ‘sustainable’ resource development as one such path.  Some noted areas of focus include:

• Tap into the growing enthusiasm for sustainability within the business.

• Link business value and sustainability in all work activities and projects.

• Challenge each individual to engage  in business sustainability programs through their current roles.

• Create training and development programs aligned with business sustainability improvement.

• Create job advancement and promotional opportunities through applied sustainability concepts and business improvement.

Highly effective organizations in the current climate recognize that the talent of the future does not exclusively or even in a large part reside outside the walls of the current organization.  Instead, these leaders are creating business sustainability cultures which identify, retain and motivate their top internal eco-talent.  Through clear communication and active employee engagement, companies are creating an optimal mix of sustainable skills for the future.