5 Steps To Building A Green Corporate Culture In Your Business

So, you have definitely decided you are “going green.” Maybe you may have already made some progress in making your business more sustainable. Now, you want to ensure that your business has a sustainable or green corporate culture so that it can grow and maintain its level of sustainability without constant reinvigorating from you.

These 5 steps will help you foster a green corporate culture

#1. Assess your business’ current culture
By asking yourself certain questions, you can develop an efficient plan for building your sustainable corporate culture:

• What values are currently in place in your corporate culture?
• What opinions do your employees have about the current state of the business and what actions it should take in the future?
• Are there gaps between your employees’ goals and your sustainability goals?
• Do you have a team of employees who are already well-suited to achieving your sustainability goals and motivating others to do the same?
• Do you currently have a rewards system?
• Are your objectives clear and consistent?

#2. Define and share your goals
You can’t motivate employees to help you achieve a goal if you don’t know it yourself or can’t articulate it. Make a broad sketch of your plans, then break them down and simplify them into clear, reachable marks. Discuss your ideas with your management and employees. This is the time to work out with your employees why you think the changes are important, and why they may not agree with you. They may anticipate drawbacks you haven’t considered, or you may notice that some employees will need more motivation than others. Finalize your plans and express it through business literature, memos, and meetings.

#3. Build a nurturing environment for change
If you want something to happen, you want to eliminate things that will hinder it. Look for aspects of your business’ schedules, resources, logistics, policies, and management strategies that will make it more difficult for employees to make desired changes. Provide access to training materials and information to give employees the knowledge and skills to be able to reach the new goals.

#4. Maintain consistency
Each meeting, new goal, memo, and action from management should bear this new corporate culture in mind. If you have your employees motivated to help you reduce water consumption, for instance, don’t turn around next week and give them a task that is contrary to it. Make sure that management sends clear messages through their actions. When they make schedules or reward an employee, their actions should be consistent with the new green corporate culture.

#5. Motivate
Give employees easily attainable goals at first and when they succeed, reward them. It is good practice for them to cut their teeth on, gets a goal behind you, and it builds a positive association in your employees’ minds. Always maintain a reward program for successes. Also, don’t forget to acknowledge and reward attempts at success. You want your employees to brainstorm, come up with ideas, and be enthusiastic about your goal, so encourage them in doing so. Consider competitions to make a game out of it and to play on people’s natural desire to reach greater heights.

These steps will make the sustainability of your business a more reachable, measurable, and manageable goal. Don’t just wing it with good intentions. Assess the situation, address obstacles, and nurture your green corporate culture.