Saving the environment saves real dollars
With a switch to an automated system for recruiting, Howard County Maryland realized net savings of $210,000 a year in paper, advertising and staffing costs.
Employer focus
Good for the environment, good for business
Approaches to going green can take as many forms as there are flowers in a garden. Whether the seeds for change get planted by upper management or are driven by an organization’s mission and values, HR often does some of the hoeing and weeding. A fundamental question is where to focus: Streamlining operations? Incentives for employees to reduce their carbon footprint? Both?
Todd Allen, SPHR, CEBS, human resources administrator for Howard County government in Maryland, began with a goal to reduce paper and improve efficiencies. His motivation for going green came from County Executive Ken Ulman, who expected his department heads to enhance environmentally-friendly business practices.
Allen brought a few expectations to his quest: he trusted technology to be his ally and he had a set of priorities, starting with benefits and recruitment. In both cases, the transformation took six months from project initiation to implementation. He attributes his department’s success to a receptive team who sought out products and best practices from other government agencies and the private sector.
In 2006, the County switched to an automated benefits enrollment system. Instead of filling out forms every open enrollment season, the government’s 2,700 employees go online to make their initial cafeteria plan selections. At re-enrollment, the technology remembers and displays their choices. Employees do little more than press a button if there are no changes; updates are equally simple.
Allen is pleased with the results. Automated enrollment has reduced HR’s expenses on gas, office supplies and mailing costs. An added benefit: improved accuracy. “We used to get enrollment forms that were either incomplete or unreadable,” says Allen.
He has taken a similar approach to recruitment. Job postings, descriptions and the filing of applications by internal and external candidates now occur exclusively online. “We used to receive 45,000 pieces of paper a year from job seekers,” Allen says. He credits the switch to an automated system, called NeoGov, for a net savings of $210,000 a year in paper, advertising and staffing costs. The County saved additional money by leasing the system instead of buying it, realizing lower initial costs and free technical updates.
Engaging employees in green efforts
Berkeley, California-based Clif Bar & Co., which makes energy bars from all natural and organic ingredients, encourages employees to respect the environment by linking its benefits package to the company’s own success mantra: “working to reduce our ecological footprint in everything we do, from the field to the final product.”
Full-time and part-time employees qualify for rewards by making changes in their personal lives that reduce emissions or are good for the environment. The Cool Home Program, for example, offers staffers up to $1,000 a year for replacing major appliances with Energy Star appliances, installing insulation and energy-efficient windows, and the like. The company’s Cool Commute Program pays employees up to $500 toward the purchase of a commuter bike or to make commute-related retrofits to an existing one. Since 2008, 62 employees have used the bike incentive program and 85 employees participated in the cool home incentive in 2009, said Kate Torgersen, Clif Bar’s assistant communications manager.
Benefits like these are also strategic; they tend to attract workers who are a good fit. “Employees want to work for companies that share their values,” Torgersen said, “They want to feel good about where they work, and they want to feel good at work.”
Engaging employees to champion conservation in the workplace is also part of Howard County HR’s agenda. Each year three employees receive prizes ranging from $200 to $500 for innovative suggestions or actions which result in environmentally beneficial results to the County or the community at large. In addition, the County Executive recognizes everyone who gets nominated. Any activity relating to waste reduction, recycling, energy savings, water conservation or education qualifies – so long as they are above and beyond the employee’s normal job responsibilities.
Getting employee engagement is key, according to John Nethercut, executive director of the Public Justice Center in Baltimore. Adopting a workplace practice like recycling paper or bottles and cans on a regular basis requires every employee’s cooperation. For these initiatives to work, “staff-driven decisions are better than management edicts,” he says. As an example, the entire office agreed to purchase real silverware and plates instead of using disposable plastic ware and to use filtered tap water instead of bringing plastic disposable bottles to the office. “Now we have arguments over whose turn it is to clean the sink,” he says with a laugh.
Resources
Greening Your Workplace Toolkit, Society for Human Resource Management, www.shrm.org
Green jobs training, www.dol.gov/dol/green
