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Are your employees engaged in thinking and acting in a manner that reflects your commitment to sustainability? Green Impact is developing an engagement tool for the County of Ventura.
Green Impact recently developed a new web-based tool for the County of Ventura to harnesses the power of grassroots green teams embed green champions throughout the organization.
The engagement tool, which can be customized for other organizations, is designed to spark friendly competition by allowing Departments to see how their engagement level ranks compared to their peers. Unlike some of the other cloud-based tools available, our tool is integrated directly into the County’s server.
A key challenge the tool was designed to tackle is how do you engage thousands of employees spread out over multiple locations? It allows teams to easily organize, create customized monthly or quarterly campaigns, develop customized posters with the program branding and track results.
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By Catherine Lynn Butler, Butlerfilms
Green Impact had the pleasured of working with Catherine Lynn Butler, Butlerfilms on our recent County of Ventura sustainability video project. She agreed to be a guest blogger, sharing her thoughts and lessons learned on how to tell a great sustainability story building on her years as a documentary film maker.
What’s the best way to create compelling content that raises awareness, resonates with your audience, and feels authentic? The answer: documentary-style storytelling or VOX populi, the “Voice of the People,” my favorite storytelling technique.
This approach elicits meaningful awareness and engagement around issues impacting our everyday lives. And the unplanned moments of spontaneity can be pure visual magic.
One of the first questions I ask at the outset of any documentary project is “Who is your target audience?” Followed by “What are your big picture goals?” No matter what your topic, you can bring a fresh point of view to your video by keeping in mind four simple storytelling tips that can make the process as fun and rewarding as the outcome:
- Know your target audience
- Lead with curiosity and collaboration
- “Build it and they will come”
- Trust spontaneity
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Green Impact recently had the opportunity to help the County of Ventura design and launch a new sustainability employee engagement strategy. The end result is a new sustainability Website, video and Web-based engagement tool. While there is much buzz these days about engaging employees, I still find the actual execution of such programs more art than science. Just in time for Earth Day, here are five tips to help you get an engagement program launched or to amp-up your existing program:
- Integrate tips for living greener at home as well as work
- Create a catchy and creative brand and tagline
- Have a clear call to action
- Make it personal–engage senior management as green champions
- Use video to tell your story
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GreenBiz’s 13th Forum kicked off yesterday with a series of intensive workshops. I attended Engaging Employees: How to Make Sustainability Simple, Effective and Fun. It included an impressive line-up of engagement experts, including Susan Hunt Stevens Founder & CEO, Practically Green, Mario Herger Senior Innovation Strategist, SAP, Megan Rast Environmental Sustainability Manager, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and Edward Butler Sustainability Manager, Nokia.Takeaways
- Goal: Make your program fun and informative that inspires action and will span different offices/cultures.
- Measurable: Identify clear, measurable metrics of success.
- Focus: Don’t tackle every issue at once. Sometimes focusing on just one action works best.
- Video: Sony Pictures shared one of the videos they use to engage employees (they show a sustainability video at employee orientation!). They nailed that tough task of making engagement funny!
What Sustainability Directors can Learn from Angry Birds: Elements that make a program fun and engaging
For me, this was the most engaging portion of the day. A lively presentation and discussion on the question of how we can bring the elements of gaming to our engagement programs. I was a very late adopter to trying Angry Birds, but still recall how it grabbed me and I was up until 3 am playing it. How do we get employees this passionate about sustainability? Some of the elements to consider as you design a program.
- Constant Feedback: This is key. Create a way for employees to know how they are doing and how others are doing.
- Reward: This is also key. Green stars, stickers, badges, “frequent flier” rewards and prizes that will feel like a reward.
- Clear goals: % participation, energy saved, dollars saved all options.
- Other elements to report: % complete, # of people, # of actions, team score.
- Profiles: Create individual or team profiles where they can learn from each other.
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