Engaging your business and team by asking how you can take better care of the earth and make smart environmental decisions are essential components of corporate social responsibility and sustainability.
At DISHER Talent, we wrestle with these same topics often. DISHER has an official team within our organization that is in charge of helping create a culture of sustainability.
The Environmental Stewardship Team’s purpose is to set DISHER apart in the sustainability/environmental space. We work to accomplish this in three ways:
- We will serve our community partners on stewardship projects related to sustainability.
- We will serve our teammates by training them in relevant topics in their personal and professional lives by developing frameworks to reduce our collective impact.
- We will serve our customers by offering unique services that meet their sustainability needs without drastically expanding the skillset of our team.
If you’re considering ways to help your own company take steps towards environmental sustainability check out a few strategies I assembled to help you evaluate and achieve your sustainability goals.
Strategies to Help You Build a Culture of Sustainability
Educate and Create Awareness
A great place to start is by educating yourself and your team about environmental issues and the importance of sustainability. By understanding your business and the unique impacts and opportunities it creates, you can better equip your teams.
Start to offer training sessions, and workshops, and explore industry partnerships to increase awareness and understanding around the topic.
Set Clear Goals and Objectives
Through benchmarking and clean communication with leadership, work to establish specific, measurable, and time-bound goals related to environmental sustainability.
These could include reducing carbon emissions (electricity or natural gas usage), minimizing waste generation, conserving water, or increasing the use of renewable energy sources.
Implement Green Practices
Use the goals and objectives that were created previously to encourage environmentally friendly practices within your organization. These could include reducing energy consumption, promoting recycling and waste reduction, developing carpool incentives, and adopting sustainable procurement practices.
Encourage innovation and continuous improvement by empowering employees to develop creative solutions for advancing sustainability objectives.
Encourage Team & Leadership Participation
Involve your team members in decision-making processes related to environmental initiatives. Encourage and incentivize them to contribute ideas, suggestions, and feedback to improve sustainability.
Without involvement from a larger team and your leadership—goals will be very difficult to accomplish.
Celebrate Achievements & Progress
Report, recognize, and celebrate progress and achievements. Provide examples of sustainability initiatives to motivate and inspire your team members, customers, and communities.
How Will You Embrace Sustainability?
The vision of DISHER is to Leave the world better than we found it through integral relationships and innovative solutions, and our mission is to Make a Positive Difference. One way we can live out both our vision and our mission is by developing new and innovative ways to steward our earth wisely. We would love to hear how your team is embracing sustainability!
