Green Options

Looking for a green job and wondering where they are? Well, as job hunters flood the usual suspects — such as solar and wind companies — with mountains of applications, you might have better luck finding your dream job in a more unexpected sector.

That’s the advice from Amy Vernetti, a managing director at headhunting firm Taylor Winfield. She says many of the green jobs are coming from areas that probably don’t leap to mind when you think of cleantech, such as companies developing fuel additives and air-filtration technologies. “These are hidden gems in the market,” she says, adding that some of them are “hiring like crazy.”

A couple months ago while strolling or rather avoiding the Bay Bridge rush hour type traffic masses in the Green Festival we spotted a shoe company. No dahhling, we didn’t spy any sustainably made Manolo Blahnik pumps (we wish) but rather some shoes that caused a Chuck Taylor déjà vu. Even more than the shoe, a sign caught our eyes – FSC certified soles. What? How can shoe soles be FSC certified? [...]

I present some preliminary demographic data from survey research I conducted with successful ecopreneurs during the research leading to the publication of my book, Build a Green Small Business: Profitable Ways to Become an Ecopreneur (McGraw-Hill).

The dwindling economy isn’t the only thing that’s hurting company profits  it’s also the widespread lack of employee engagement. The Towers Perrin firm conducted a global workforce study of employees around the world, and only 21% of employees surveyed were engaged in their work. The study reported that the more employees were engaged, or willing to go the extra mile to help their company succeed, the better the financial results.

A post by contributing writer Melissa Chungfat.

But even before the economic meltdown and the lack of employee engagement, many companies felt they had to choose between economic success and the environment. Can the case of economy vs. environment be settled?

Last week I blogged about avoiding trouble with human resource issues, and this week I’m taking a more upbeat note. As a green business, you’ve got a hiring and motivational advantage, and you should retain those dedicated employees with as many benefits as you can without breaking the bank.

Alignment around the Environmental Mission

One of the most important operational issues in any business is alignment around a common goal. In some organizations the mission and the highest priorities are unclear. Often, well-meaning staff members are working at cross purposes or are at least not benefiting by the compounding effect of everyone’s efforts complimenting that of everyone else.

In an eco-enterprise, you probably think about and speak about your mission often, and it is likely that your staff joined your green business because they believe strongly in the mission.

Knowing Employment Rules Helps You Devise An Ideal Strategy

As the owner of a green business, you have some flexibility in terms of paid time off and holidays, flexible work schedules and more, and this can help build staff loyalty and help save you costs. By assessing the specific needs of your staff, you can work out a custom benefits package that pleases them and works for you financially.

Do not assume that you have to have the same benefits that were offered at your former employer or that of your friends’ current employers. Find out the employment laws, and then define your own strategy.

I usually recommend separating vacation time from sick time, versus lumping it altogether as paid

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

Photo credits: Wired.com.

Entrepreuneur.com recently wrote an excellent guide for small business owners on proactive moves they can take to survive - and better yet, thrive - in the nose-diving economy.

“You Can Weather the Economic Storm (Product price sensitivity and financial creativity can help you thrive in any economy)” is especially relevant for green entrepreneurs as many of the principles underlying Dennis Romero’s advice aligns with what sustainable business leaders already know: go for local resilience, understand the value of community-based goodwill and when in doubt, simply, simplify, simplify to the bare essentials (do the latest farm-fresh food recipes or eco-cleaning supplies mantras sound familiar, anyone?).

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.

CSR - HR = PR

(Corporate Social Responsibility - Human Resources = Public Relations)

I came across this “equation” yesterday while researching best green HR practices. It is a quote by Adine Mees and Jamie Bunham of Canadian Business for Social Responsibility from DRIVING SUCCESS: Human resources and sustainable development. They then followed with this:

If employees are not engaged, Corporate Social Responsibility becomes an exercise in public relations. The credibility of an organization will become damaged when it becomes evident that a company is not ‘walking the talk’.

Although some say that the verdict is still out when it comes to green initiatives for employees, I say not. Some studies say that while nice, offering green initiatives doesn’t actually affect employment decisions or employee satisfaction, the two metrics that actually mean something. However, when looking at the trend data, Green employee programs seem to make a lot of sense. Trend watcher Reinier Evers says that the rising importance of salient perks and benefits, which he calls “perkonomics“ is a development that should not be ignored. Studies show that female and younger employees increasingly want green HR initiatives. In another, 79% of Gen Y workers report that they would be more likely to accept a job offer at a green company than another company when evaluating two similar job offers. Another study found that 69% of Gen Y workers want their company to be more environmentally friendly. Working women (63%) feel the same way, compared to only 54% of men and 52% of Boomers.

Last week I shared the triple bottom line adapted from our ECOpreneuring book. The triple bottom line encompasses people, planet and (some) profits. Since people run a business, I started by examining how the DNA of a Green Business Starts with People, touching on customers and employees (apparently not highly valued at the now defunct Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns).

The other two People bottom lines are vendors/suppliers and investors (if your business has any), addressed below:

(3) Vendors and Suppliers

How a sustainable business chooses and interacts with vendors and suppliers, so-called business-to-business transactions, that provide the supplies and services the business needs to run is one way ecopreneurs are helping grow and magnify our impacts. We seek out like-minded vendors with whom to do business. Co-op America’s Green Pages (greenpages.com) is often our first stop to look for products our business might need, since it lists thousands of socially and environmentally responsible businesses.

A growing number of small businesses are perhaps inspired by the Amish and their collaborative sense of community and shared economic prosperity. Rather than working alone, many Amish provide goods or services to each other, working together on projects that on the surface may benefit only one farmer, but on the whole end up benefiting the entire community. As author Bill McKibben writes about in Deep Economy, there’s greater comfort and security from community membership than individual ownership. This idea is reflected in the business-to-business commerce mushrooming on the Internet and in small businesses, especially the nanocorps, or new forms of interlinked commercial websites, like Sohodojo.com.

It’s no secret: businesses who build durable internal systems breed long term and sustainable profits.

In fact, the rule on the street, and this applies to enterprising green businesses who are past their mainstream ‘breaking point’ and are now swimming with the rest of the so-called ’sharks’, is often ‘automate or perish’.

But automation (business speak for “doing it better and faster”) is hardly a Darwinian one-way street – eco-minded companies are benefiting more than just their own bottom line by developing or partnering to develop software that automates green decision making: they are greening entire industries.

And, the three who are doing it – Green Printer, Workforce Software and Sustainable Minds – have a lot to share on what it takes to get there.