If business wants to regain the public’s trust, they’re going to have to be trustworthy, and employees are the key. Here are three basic steps to engage your employees, build social capital, and win stakeholder trust.
Corporate sustainability communicators are beginning to exploit social media to tell their stories and get quick feedback. Which new media offer you the greatest potential- what is their digital bottomline?
There is a serious lack of trust among consumers these days. Citizens of every country are eying large national and multi-national corporations with a narrowed, suspicious gaze. Questions are being asked. Answers demanded. With taxpayers around the world bailing out stupendous failures in the financial, housing, and insurance sectors, there is more than a lack of consumer confidence affecting the market. Frankly, we’re over it. We just don’t trust big business anymore. This is actually nothing new. But the uniform opinion of distrust, leveraged by the social media tools of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Ning sites, and blogging seems to have brought us to a tipping point.
Green job boards are popping up all over the internet. I review them regularly and my assessment is this: the chances that you will land a job in sustainability because of something you see on a job board are slim. Very slim. Consider that in more flush times, Americans have a much higher chance to find a job through networking than responding to an ad. Statistics vary, but I have seen anywhere from 60% – 80% quoted as the percentage of jobs found through networking. Now consider that these are difficult times for the American job market and companies are having a hard enough time finding the resources to add jobs to their payroll that we all know and understand, let alone something “new” like sustainability director. In a nutshell, there is not much on these job boards in either quantity or quality to give a job seeker hope.
So you wrote a CR report! Big deal! What next? Make it BUZZ. The thing about writing CSR reports is that they take a helluvalotta energy. The reporting process takes months, involves many internal and external stakeholders, and creates a reporting frenzy in the organization which bypasses none but the most unengaged employees. In theory, that is. Sometimes reporting is an intensive process for a just small group of individuals in the organization. Whatever the format, it’s intense. There’s a build-up. A deadline. Many hurdles to defuse. (is that as mixed metaphore?) Then. It happens. You send the report to print (or upload it to your fancy new html flash mini-site for viewing by the general public) and that’s it. B-I-G sigh of relief. Mop your brow. Stare into space and feel the release. Off to the bar for a celebratory drink. Sit back and wait for the compliments to start flowing in. I suspect this is how it happens in most organizations.
The following green career strategies and perspectives that I found around the web. The topics include: How to write a green resume; targeting your green job search; green career transition tips for the less experienced; who will be needed in the first wave of green jobs; 101 best Twitter feeds for job hunters; and why Van Jones took a job in the Obama Administration.
