Green Options

As a consultant to a number of start up companies and as a friend to many more talented, educated, otherwise stellar founders of companies, I have observed a significantly high number of missteps around human resource issues. Whether the result is a costly lawsuit or just hurt feelings, HR mistakes are easy to make and enormously costly, if only due to hundreds of hours of lost productivity.

I bring this up to Ecopreneurist readers because I feel it is particularly easy for there to be miscommunication between employees and employers in a mission-driven business.  In any startup, most employees make near-term financial sacrifices to be part of the team. In environmental startups, many employees join, at least in part, due to a desire to make a positive impact on the planet.

“We’re All In It For the Cause” (and other Signs of Potential Trouble)

Be careful when people feel they are sacrificing. One day, they might feel slighted over a promotion not received or a plum project assigned to someone else, and they might look back at the time they have

As mentioned last week in my post about greening HR, telecommuting is often cited as one of the most valuable (to both employers and employees) green benefit to offer. Telecommuting has been credited with a variety of advantages including improved work/family balance, supervisor-staff relationships, job satisfaction, worker retention, productivity and career prospects, as well as reduced stress, absenteeism and recruiting, office space and parking costs.

Kate Lister ad Tom Harnish, the folks behind the great telecommuting blog, Undress4Success, are writing a book called Undress4Success–The Naked Truth About Working From Home to be published by John Wiley & Sons in March 2009. The team have compiled a great deal of research and posit that work-at-home programs could reduce Gulf Oil Imports by almost 75%. If that’s accurate, it could be a game-changer.