Employee Engagement: Bringing Your Best Self to Work

It's so common to discuss employee engagement from the perspective of the company. Obviously, the benefits of engaged employees to a business are many: increased productivity, better communication, collaborative team work, employee retention, and best of all, the alignment of a corporate sustainability plan with an employee’s day to day duties.

But what about employee engagement from the employee's perspective? Which path do you take to create meaningful work? Essentially, it means bringing your best self to work.

Quite often, employers and businesses are lagging in the adoption of sustainability concepts. Sure, well meaning executives may have good intentions toward starting the recycling center or monitoring and measuring energy use, but leadership alone is not responsible for leading eco action. We all are! As mentioned in the post, Sustainability: Two Sides of the Same Coin, shaping our future takes both sides of the sustainability coin- business and personal.

Bringing your best self to work means being lit up, excited, passionate about expressing your values in ways that are meaningful and rewarding to you in a professional setting.   Avenues for expressing that include:

•    Consider your approach to your current position. No one knows your job better than you. You have a better chance of discovering ways to improve processes and integrate sustainability concepts than anyone. Perform your job from the perspective of how can I do my job in a more eco friendly manner.
•    Take eco action in your daily activities: recycle, commit to paperless, share with others what you are doing and why you are doing it and get them involved.
•    Engage management by incorporating sustainability concepts in your personal development plan.
•    Take on new sustainability roles and projects in the organization: start a recycling program, lead a paper free initiative, host a lunch and learn providing local and organic foods
•    Become the “go-to” person for all things green
•    Expand your corporate green network: engage in internal business activities, networking events, internal and external training, professional organizations, and business communities. An easy option to engage in your company’s community outreach programs.
Creating meaningful work is both the responsibility of the employer as well as the employee. How are you creating meaningful work?

Creating meaningful work is both the responsibility of the employer as well as the employee. Are you bringing your best self to work?