Energy Efficiency: A Gateway to Employee Engagement

Sometimes, corporate sustainability is like playing telephone. Witnessed from a high level, a company's corporate sustainability plan may embrace all the right frameworks, include the buzz words, and authentically and credibly, embrace sustainability initiatives. However, witnessed from the employee level, all that jargon and vision may be lost.

While there may be a disconnect between a corporate sustainability plan and the practical application in an employee's day to day activities, perhaps energy efficiency measures is one way to connect the two while simultaneously improving productivity by creating meaningful work.

Employee engagement is an effective, but possibly underutilized strategy for improving energy efficiency. In fact, energy efficiency can be a gateway to wider business innovation and engage stakeholders in broader process evaluations. Suggestions made in our eco friendly training include:

First establishing a baseline of consumption for benchmarking efforts.
Create an energy policy for the business. Using your consumption information, you may want to identify areas of improvement.
Implement behavior and usage modifications.
Measure and monitor your progress.
Communicate your success and appreciation to employees for taking eco action.

Tying corporate sustainability initiatives to day to day processes makes CSR more personable to an employee and helps employees to identify their role in corporate responsibility. Additionally, energy efficient programs educate and inform workers of best practices in reducing energy consumption that can be applied at home and in the community expanding eco awareness and sustainability concepts from the workplace into the community for even greater energy savings.