Sustainability Brand Ambassadors
Companies are embracing sustainability with increasing enthusiasm as they realise it’s not just about cutting costs or saving trees. Sustainability adds value, strengthens competitive advantage and attracts and retains better employees. Sustainability Policies can only succeed with full leadership support and strong employee engagement.
Maria Anderson from Sustainable Marketing has developed the following six key steps to get you started with creating your own sustainability brand ambassadors:
- Select your sustainability ambassador team. You need a senior leader with influence for the program to be successful. Ideally, you will also have one staff member from each department. The key requisite is passion. The purpose of this role is to engage your staff. You do not need a sustainability expert.
- Give your ambassador team the tools to succeed. Provide them with planned key messages to communicate to your staff. Develop a “take home pack” that will help your staff be more sustainable at work and home.
- Provide a formal and anonymous way for your team to provide feedback. The best options are feedback boxes, 1800 toll lines and intranets - emails are not anonymous. A feedback mechanism will help you leverage the combined sustainability IQ of your whole business.
- Measure and record your sustainability successes. Your leaders and ambassadors must make commitments that they can measure on.
- Display a dashboard measuring your waste, energy and water use. Display your daily or weekly targets for energy, water and recycling. Use symbols on your dashboard, people are easily engaged with simple and clear symbols.
- Employ new technologies to help you implement sustainability into your business such as energy meters, auto turn off switches for lights, equipment and computers to name a few. Your staff will be excited about new technology that helps them to make a positive contribution to our planet.
Remember: sustainability is a journey, not a destination. Every small step counts.