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In today’s competitive talent market, attracting the best and brightest goes beyond just offering a good salary. Eco-conscious candidates are increasingly seeking employers who share their values for environmental responsibility.

But how can your organization create a sustainable hiring strategy that benefits both the planet and your talent pool? Read on to discover key ways to reduce your environmental impact, build a diverse and inclusive workforce, and invest in your people – all while attracting top talent who will propel your business forward.

Inspiration

Patagonia – Everything We Make has an Impact on the Planet

Patagonia has robust environmental and social responsibility programs to guide their materials and products. They share information about their owned facilities and suppliers to ensure transparency in their supply chain.

Alaska Airlines – Caring for the Long Haul

Alaska Airlines takes a holistic approach to sustainability, focusing on reducing their climate impact, waste and supporting healthy ecosystems. They became the first U.S. carrier to replace plastic with planet-friendly alternatives.

Cox Enterprises – Minimizing our Footprint

The Cox Conserves program has invested $165 million in sustainability projects. They achieved their Zero Waste to Landfill goal by 2024, becoming the first U.S. enterprise-wide service company to reach a 92% waste diversion rate.

The Cool Down – Better Products. Zero Compromise. Big Impact.

The Cool Down promotes eco-friendly shopping by recommending sustainable alternatives to reduce the environmental impact of everyday products, which contribute significantly to planet-heating pollution.

NBA Cares  – NBA Green

The NBA aims to reduce its carbon footprint by 50% by 2030 through initiatives like reducing team travel, launching the Arena Sustainability Task Force, and cutting office plastic bottle usage.

Kimberly-Clark – Better Care for a Better World

Kimberly-Clark aims to improve one billion lives in underserved communities by 2030 while reducing their environmental footprint in plastics, forests, carbon emissions and water use.

Watch the Kimberly-Clarke Investor Day here:

20 Easy Ways to Go Green

1. Spark the conversation. Bringing awareness to the topic is the first step.
2. Ask your employees to contribute to a corporate policy, and empower them to take ownership.
   • One idea to standardize this is to ask each employee to create a personal sustainability goal as part of their career development or OKRs.
3. Get stakeholders involved and create alignment. Develop a compelling business case that focuses on cost savings, productivity, and growth. 
4. Advocacy – Take the initiative if no one else will. Consider the company’s stance on sustainability, and get clear on a unified message that would be appropriate to incorporate into the hiring process – what are the core values and issues that are unique to the company? Add it to the “about us” section. 
   1. What is your company doing for the world? 
   2. What is your company doing for the community? 
   3. What is your company doing for its employees? 
5. Identify if your company wants to invest in a new role overseeing sustainability. Or, to save on spend, put a task force together – consider this a “volunteer” initiative, but set a clear framework and OKRs to get the business to meet its goals.
6. Embed language into your digital assets and marketing materials, such as your career pages. 
7. Mention any partnerships, products, or services that are compliant with sustainability during the interview process if there are questions about how your company engages with technology. 
8. Incorporate the message in your job description and your commitment to your organization’s ESG efforts. 
9. Benefits – audit your employer benefits, and get educated on what they are to communicate to job seekers. Don’t have green benefits? Invent some that are low-to-no cost and easy to implement. One example is a workforce volunteer day, where each employee gets a day off to volunteer for a cause that they are personally passionate about. 
10. Schedule a monthly check-in with your internal sustainability stakeholders to discuss progress, new initiatives, or regulatory updates to foster a long-lasting behavioral habit. 
11. Show, don’t tell. Highlight your current employees participating in company CSR initiatives to highlight sustainable hiring.  
12. Retention – measure the employee satisfaction pre and post-sustainability initiatives.
13. Switch your candidate experience and onboarding swag to sustainable products. Think reusable water bottles, coffee cups, and other office essentials. Consider sustainable, natural materials for any brand merch.  
14. Education can be a powerful tool for change. Find informative materials to support employees in their personal and in-home adoption efforts. Some examples include books, podcasts, webinars and engaging in local environmental groups. 
15. Make it competitive. Identify your unique employer value proposition, and research how the competition is framing sustainability in their messaging, and audit where you stack up against competition. 
16. Thread sustainability into all of the layers of business strategy. 
17. Consider working with a consultant or specialist in ESG and CSR. 
18. Consider programmatic advertising for your open roles in niche communities or networks to get in front of job seekers who may already identify as an advocate. 
19. Add questions into the interview or candidate intake process. 
20. “Do what you can, with what you have, with where you are.” Theodore Roosevelt

Things You Might Already Be Doing

• Go green – in office recycling and reduce waste, conserve water and energy, go paperless
• Supporting local community businesses, or supporting eco-friendly companies
• Eliminating paper and plastic products
• Selecting partners and vendors who practice sustainability and make pledges 
• Volunteering your time, or volunteering with your team
• Hybrid or remote work environments can save on commuting costs

What to Track and Measure in the Hiring Process

• Engagement in recruitment marketing domains and content across all digital properties and social media. What are candidates responding to? 
• Measure what content candidates are engaging with, and what is driving applications.
• Evaluate what kind of skills you are seeing as keywords in the resumes who are applying.
• During the exit interview, ask the employee to reflect on their perception of sustainability at your organization.

The Bottom Line

Feeling overwhelmed by possibility? Start with small, conscious choices every day on an individual level. Each step contributes to the greater collective effort to preserve our planet and secure future generations. 

What is your personal mission to sustainability? Share with us to have your company featured during our next sustainability awareness campaign. 

We put together a few resources that we have found inspirational, and your team may too. 

Resources

• NYU School of Sustainability & Edelman: For communications best practices for messaging sustainability. Best practice guide for brands and marketers
• RMC Hiring Leadership Lab on Sustainability as Strategy: Hear from the experts
• Deloitte: Future Workforce Survey of Millenials and Gen Z
• The Cool Down: Sign up for their newsletter
• Poking the Bear: Research by Revolt that looks at communication around sustainability
• Read Green Giants: How smart companies turn sustainability into billion dollar businesses by Freya Williams
• Canary Marketing: For all your eco-friendly brand merch needs to celebrate your candidates and new hires