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Free pizza on Fridays, bring-your-dog-to-work days, unlimited PTO… Perks like these have historically kept key employees engaged, as well as unlocked recruitment rates.
But for the next-generation employee, there’s a new kid on the block: sustainability.
Having a clear, actionable sustainability strategy is becoming a key lever for driving employee engagement — and it could quickly become a non-negotiable for all companies.
That’s one of the insights from a recent poll we conducted at The Cool Down, the biggest climate brand reaching over 35M people a month. We regularly poll our audience of mainstream Americans to get their pulse on key questions — and this time, we asked, “Would you work for a company that doesn’t have a sustainability strategy?”
Here’s what we found:
- Nearly 50% of respondents said “no” or “only if the pay is good,” suggesting that a meaningful segment of the workforce is unwilling to compromise on sustainability.
- 23% voted “Only if the company is working to develop a plan,” suggesting a meaningful opportunity for companies to address employee’s concerns with thoughtful strategic development.
And interestingly, many of the “no” votes came from readers who had engaged with stories featuring outraged employees who were unhappy with the way their company was handling excess goods or falling short of its promises.
(Between you and me, that’s a warning to companies that aren’t thoughtful about sustainability — your employees will likely take notice.)
On the flip side, employees can be important advocates for a company’s sustainability strategy, even co-creating solutions and acting as powerful brand ambassadors. When employees feel positively about their company’s strategy—and feel like they’re part of the solution—that’s the holy grail.
Take Alaska Airlines, for example. I had the chance to interview Ryan Spies, the company’s director of sustainability, which has a strong internal green team.
“Educating and bringing on our champions internally is a big piece of it for us,” he said.
He told me that one agent sparked an innovative tactic that now removes up to 50,000 pounds of recyclable waste from near the Arctic Circle each year — by being closest to the action, this employee could bring her idea to the table and then Alaska Airlines leadership could set the solution in motion.
Another employee, frustrated by the amount of plastic they were using to wrap children’s car seats (Alaska offers flyers a free plastic bag for this), suggested an improvement that saves the company 15,000 pounds of plastic every year. That’s a great sustainability win and a cost savings for the airline.
I also spoke to the chief sustainability and transformation officer of Albertsons, Suzanne Long, who told me about spending time with front-line employees volunteering at food donation workshops. Several employees “said that in their 25, 35, 40 years of working with the company, they had never felt more connected.”
“Hearing them say that this was the unlock, this was the thing that felt most like it tugged at their heart and made them excited to come to work every day — I think I knew it, but this was what made me even more dedicated to wanting to help our … employees really find a way to be able to engage in reducing food waste and our entire recipe for change.”
Bottom line: “There’s a connection between what we do in sustainability and how connected people feel to their place of work, Long said.
Building a successful green team doesn’t happen overnight, but it’s well worth the effort — when your employees are empowered to act, the whole company becomes a force to be reckoned with.”
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