Green, green, green! We must go green! We hear that all the time, but what does it really mean to businesses and how can a business be green even if their core product or service has nothing to do with green technologies?
The secret to being green is sustainability. A sustainable business offers products and services that fulfil society's needs while, at the same time, contributing to the triple bottom line.
How do you contribute to the triple bottom line?
What a daunting and intimidating prospect! The way to approach this is to break down "all inhabitants" into manageable groups.
For a business, manageable groups would mean your customers, your employees, your suppliers, your partners, and finally everyone else on the planet. Considering each group and what your business can do to ensure the well-being of that group is the secret to sustainability.
It is a well-known fact that the leading sustainability companies in the UK understand that the triple bottom line is critical to a business's success.
Your business is only as successful as each employee, and that employee's success is based on:
- The employee's ability to understand and assess customers' requirements
- The employee is the right person for the right position
- The employee's continued development to ensure the employee has the skills to meet and exceed customer expectations
- The organisation's ability to create a workplace that ensures employees can meet the performance demands placed on them
Everyone that an employee interacts with is a customer in one form or another. External customers are easy to spot and identify, these are the customers that pay for goods and services.
However, in an organisation, many employees often deal only with internal customers, which are employees from other departments that require the services of another employee to fulfil a business objective. Learning to identify and assess the requirements of this type of customer can help a business succeed and become sustainable. In this case, sustainability comes from employees finding constructive, productive, and fulfilling ways to meet each other’s' needs.
For a business to be sustainable the right person needs to be employed in the right job. One of the quickest ways to detrimentally affect an employee's well-being and the well-being of the people around them is to have a person in the wrong position. This will affect the business' bottom line and it will affect sustainability.
In addition to having the right person for the job, continual development of employees is also part of sustainable business practices because it contributes to society's needs while also helping a business to be more profitable.
Society is enriched when individuals continue to develop any part of themselves. A business that provides opportunities for employee development will derive many different benefits. First of all, the business will benefit from an increase in productivity, increase in quality, and increase in customer satisfaction, and responsible sourcing strategy. Hopefully, all of this translates into increased profits. The employee, employer, and society at large all benefit from employee development. This is sustainability in action.
Going green is about more than just recycling!
Although recycling and other pro-environment activities are important it is more important to create a workplace environment that promotes sustainability by focusing on employees. A professional and leading sustainability company in the UK can work with your company to identify areas for business process improvement to ensure your employees are meeting customer needs and working to create a truly sustainable business that will positively impact your bottom line and positively impact society for generations to come.
By developing the right team who are capable; enthusiastic; motivated and focused, you will be able to take a back seat in the running of the business.
