The idea sounds simple enough. Create a team of volunteers from existing employees. Have them focus on ways to green the business and culture. In turn, create cost savings, attract top talent due to an improvement in brand recognition, and increase market share from the newfound brand image, possibly even innovative product and services. The idea and the goal sound simple, while the execution and plan of attack seem a bit more complex. How can an individual or company go about implementing this team of sustainability focused volunteers? Resources and guides may be abundant and abound. The report, “Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability,” released by GreenBiz.com and Green Impact, provides a good starting point that captures the business case for these green teams, how to get started, four key areas behind best practices, and a breakdown of 10 best practices in developing green teams.
Elaine Cohen explores the changes that are taking place in sustainability report and makes an assessment on the implications of those changes on organization sustainability. She provides a list of characteristics of what she thinks are needed in an effective online sustainability report that is transparent, engages the reader, and opens up a dialogue.
“Metrics, metrics and more metrics. In many ways metrics drive the success of business. Multiple variables can be condensed to the common denominator of dollars and cents, pounds and pence. Many business failures could have been avoided for want of a business case. But, the specificity of metrics also allow us to persuade ourselves that there is more science and more certainty than there may really be and that we fully understand the complex interactions of the real world. There are solid business cases behind some of the most spectacular business failures – perhaps those where metrics were allowed to lead decisions rather than inform them.
