Employee Motivation in a Green Business

Introducing a green business culture to your enterprise can also have a dramatic effect on your employees’ motivation and morale. It is far more rewarding personally to work for a company that is making every effort to operate in a clean, honest, and progressive manner than to work for a company that is polluting its environs, ignoring regulations, and wasting material and energy. Improving your employees’ (and your own) pride in their work and in their company can build a highly motivated work force that is more loyal, has less turnover, and is much more involved in the process of innovation. This employee motivation and involvement can drive additional cost savings as you move your company toward a greener and leaner future.

You will also begin to attract the best and the brightest employees—those who share your values and commitment to actively creating a better world. As the best employees are drawn to your company, you’ll also notice that they will tend to stay longer—thus reducing your costs of retraining new employees. You will have far less turnover as your employees find much greater satisfaction working for a company that mirrors their own personal values. People want to make a positive difference with their lives and their work. They want their lives to be meaningful. If they are able to find this in their work, this satisfaction will translate into increased productivity as they apply their efforts to helping the company become ever more environmentally and socially responsible.

Increased employee commitment to a greener company mission will also provide you with an excellent early warning system regarding potential problems, as your fundamental shift in focus to greener operations will foster a closer appraisal of all aspects of your company by its employees. You and your employees will be more likely to notice aspects of your business that can be improved once the mission of the company is directed toward a continual improvement of the environmental impact of the business.

A cleaner, more efficient business, one that has reduced its waste stream and its use of toxic substances, will also offer its employees a much healthier and safer workplace atmosphere that will in turn inspire greater employee confidence in and loyalty to your company. A healthier and safer business will also be a workplace that is far less prone to accidents, spills, or other emergencies. You will find that the benefits that accrue to your business from the process of striving for sustainability will begin to show up in ways that you never anticipated. And those benefits will continue to grow as your outlook on your business changes to a more hands-on approach to finding and exploiting every possible measure to green your business.