How to Choose an Exceptional Sustainability Team
You have decided to make changes in your home and you are toying with the idea of making changes at your workplace. You are disturbed by the evident waste and are convinced that with simple tweaks here and there, your organisation will save some money will be able to start its sustainability journey.
Similarly, Christine Liu, a YouTuber at Snapshots of Simplicity and the author of Sustainable Home decided to start a green initiative while working at Cisco, a Fortune 50 company. At the time, she was working in the IT aspect of the business but was more interested in sustainable packaging and design over time. She teamed up with like-minded colleagues to start their “green team” and were able to make significant contributions to their company’s approach to reducing their carbon footprint. In the long run, enabled her to pivot into a full-time role as a Sustainable Packaging Program Manager.
So what exactly does a Sustainability Team Do?
According to Nikki Pava founder of Alegria Partners and author of Green Wisdom: A Guide for Anyone to Start, Engage and Energize a Sustainability Team: Their primary role is to work with the executive to coordinate various sustainability initiatives and ensure that they align with the company’s needs, mission and vision. This translates into:
- organising corporate campaigns and events,
- participate in energy and waste audits,
- obtain endorsements and certifications that pertain to the company’s industry,
- develop company-wide volunteer opportunities
Ms Pava shares the following tips on building your exceptional team:
Depending on your organisation, the structure of your sustainability team will vary. Chances are that your first green team will be made up of passionate volunteers which is okay. Nonetheless, it is important to have doers rather than just passionate tree-huggers so that you can maintain momentum and morale in the team.
Have a cross-functional team, members from different departments and functions so that you can involve the company. The creation of cross-functional teams helps you improve communication and collaboration among people who do not usually work together.
In addition, having a company executive sponsoring your initiative will increase your team’s visibility and they will champion your causes particularly when there are financial implications. One of the easiest ways to get executive buy-in is to create a plan of action that includes your themed campaigns and initiatives, budgets, timelines and desirable outcomes.
Embed your message in your corporate communication, conversations and policies especially those who are directly in touch with your customers and other stakeholders. This will ease the process of creating sustainability ambassadors especially in the supply chain and customer service departments.
Expect that there will be challenges. Therefore, identify the core issues, brainstorm over possible solutions and then implement them. For instance, since many green teams are voluntary, this might entail working outside normal business hours. You don’t want their day jobs to suffer. Hence, some teams have early morning meetings or lunch meetings (with meals provided) or the team’s tasks are handled by two people so that there is constant progress.
Make it as fun and creative as possible. Some teams have structured reward-based systems for carrying brown bag lunches, carpooling and energy efficiency. When making presentations to your colleagues, vary the format. Invite thought leaders to give short talks or watch documentaries and discuss the issues over several sessions.
Starting a new initiative that brings a group of organisational strangers may not always be the easiest things to do. Nonetheless, it is important to always begin with the end goal in mind, that will be your constant source of motivation to plough through when the going gets tough.
