Environmental Education Benefits Business and Employees
Improving operational efficiency, strengthening customer and community relations, innovation, supply chain management, and attracting and retaining employees are all benefits businesses can look forward to when they make environmental education company practice, according to a report published by the National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) last week.
“Successful employee engagement programs motivate employees and can be an asset in recruitment and retention,” said Diane Wood, President of the National Environmental Education Foundation in a recent press release about the report.
One of the keys to building a business case for environmental and sustainability education is realizing cost savings by operational efficiencies (through less waste, water and energy usage).
As an example, Stonyfield (yogurt makers) challenged its employees in 2008 to save energy at the company’s facilities. By attaching savings to employee bonuses for all workers, the company achieved its annual goal, reducing company energy use (per ton of product) by over 22 percent.
A challenge that the white paper points out is the difficulty of delivering quantifiable numbers that demonstrate the impact of employee engagement in environmental/sustainability initiatives. However, data gathering, correlating employee engagement to environmental results and surveying employees and customers helps prove the overall benefit of this employee engagement. With all of the benefits gained, this effort certainly sounds worthy of investment.
Read more from the report here.