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Eco-Trainer: It's Not Easy Being Green
March 19, 2008
Going green is great for your organization's profile as a responsible corporate citizen, and for the image you project to customers. But it often requires teaching employees new operations and business practices. Is your training department up to the challenge?
By Margery Weinstein
Talk of climates on the rise is worrying companies that never before considered their impact on the environment. Are they, like the polar bears, in danger of vanishing? Maybe. Increasingly, eco-minded consumers are putting pressure on companies to prove they’re doing their best to minimize damage to the environment. With fear of declining profits—if not a genuine desire to "go green"—it soon may be up to trainers to teach employees, used to ecologically harmful manufacturing and business processes, to change their ways. The trick is accomplishing that while staying efficient and attuned to your company's overall business strategy.
Learning to "LEED"
At Boston-based Suffolk Construction, the push to go green got a boost in June 2007 when the company launched its Leadership in Environmental and Energy Design (LEED) program. The goal was to educate its workforce about the principles of green building design as defined by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). "LEED" refers to green certification standards created by the council. The program begins with an overview to help all Suffolk employees understand what LEED is, and how building projects must rack up points for green characteristics to attain certification. The audience for this overview ranges from the marketing department to the construction team. "It's about sustainable design," says Training Director David First of the overview's training content. "It could be anything from a green roof we're talking about for a construction project to having a sustainable rainwater reclamation system in a building." Employees are taught how inclusion of green building characteristics, such as energy efficient roofs and "daylighting" window features, count as points toward LEED certification.
For Suffolk, going green isn't just a good move for its community—it's the law. First says teaching employees the ins and outs of LEED certification is essential given the law in Boston that all newly constructed buildings exceeding 50,000 square feet qualify to earn at least 26 LEED certification points. More than teaching workers facts and figures, the role of Suffolk trainers, says First, has been to herald a kind of "revolution." It's a new way of approaching building design. "The whole idea of sustainable building practices, and LEED, is a way of thinking," he explains. "It goes beyond just taking several courses. It's thinking collaboratively as a team."
Executing LEED-worthy design re-quires the joint efforts of a diverse set of employees that may, in any given project, include subcontractors, project managers, superintendents, architects, building owners, and end-users of the building-to-be. The LEED emphasis has changed the conversation, says First, "because you're discussing the path to certification, and how to build a project that has sustainable design and is green."
After employees complete the overview coursework, they receive a curriculum particular to their job function. Employees working at construction sites, for instance, are taught about the green building materials they need to incorporate. Those working in a marketing capacity for Suffolk, on the other hand, are taught how to talk to the public and prospective customers about the company's commitment to green construction. In addition to job-specific training, workers receive LEED curriculum that's tailored to individual projects. Providing instruction particular to specific projects requires Suffolk to bring in consultants to teach both internal employees and external project teams, such as those working for the new building's architect and owner. The company also offers training at its Red and Blue University to enable employees to become a LEED Accredited Professional, a designation referring to a person who has passed a USGBC LEED accreditation test. Test study groups supplement this live, eight-hour class.
Alongside benefiting the environment, LEED buoys the engagement of Suffolk's youngest workers, says First. "The young people coming into our workforce are energized by these kinds of initiatives," he notes. "LEED is the construction industry's version of the hybrid car." Enthusiasm for everything green is apparent in participants of the company's Career Start job immersion program for new college graduates. "They're demanding LEED training," he says of these young workers. "Our younger employees expect and demand green building initiatives."
Weeding Out Waste
 Eliminating waste from its manufacturing process is nothing new for Calhoun, GA-based flooring company Mohawk Industries, which rolled out a Waste Stream Management initiative in 2004 in one of its divisions. And as long as a decade ago, the company was teaching reps how to incorporate into sales pitches information on the recycled materials in its products. Last year, the company launched the Greenworks sustainability platform, an organization-wide waste reduction program that uses recycled materials, such as used soda bottles, to produce carpets and other flooring. Accompanying the initiative is educational content on the company's learning management system (LMS) that keeps sales reps up to speed. "You can think of it as a PowerPoint that talks about all the [green] initiatives Mohawk is involved in followed by a 10- to 20-question test every employee has to complete," says Vice President of Learning Development Mike Zoellner. Sales reps receive additional green information in person multiple times a year during new product meetings and shows with product managers.
 Besides soda bottles, the company uses recycled and renewable materials such as rubber tires to produce door mats, and most recently has started manufacturing "SmartStrand" carpet made from a polymer (that goes into the yarn to make the carpet) that is 37 percent corn sugar in contrast to the oil-based nylon or polyester found in most carpeting. Sales reps are taught the importance of sharing these manufacturing facts with the stores they sell to. "They might tell stores every time they sell 7 yards of SmartStrand, we save the equivalent of 1 gallon of gasoline," says Zoellner, who explains that the company arms reps with talking points on such facts to jog their memory.
Mohawk also conducts training courses for retailers selling its products. "When we go to retailers to teach them about product knowledge on carpet," says Zoellner, "we use the same talking points we gave our salesperson, so it completes the loop, and they're getting a consistent story." Beyond efforts to educate its workforce and customers, a handful of Mohawk manufacturing plant employees asked the company for permission to use information about its products to educate school children about the benefits of recycling.
Even though they're not selling to anyone, it's important for employees in non-sales capacities to understand the green characteristics of Mohawk's products, Zoellner emphasizes. "We want them to know the talking points," he says, "because they all have friends and neighbors, and, at the end of the day, that will sell more product. I also want employees to feel good about the company they work for, and this is the kind of initiative that makes you feel good about the business you're in."
Paperless Path
When communications company Cortel decided to go paperless six years ago, it wasn't a fast and easy change. The environmentally friendly transition required a cultural shift, says Dianne Avoletta, Cortel's vice president of administration. The company signed on with CheckPoint HR, a provider of a Web-based platform automating all human resources functions such payroll and benefits, in 2002, but most employees didn't hop on the paperless bandwagon until about a year ago. Like many companies, Cortel workers go online to view pay stubs and complete performance reviews. But now it wants to go even further, educating employees not to print out records, thereby transforming the company into an almost entirely paperless organization.
To that end, Avoletta and her team are educating employees that there's no need to print a copy for their records since the whole thing is easily accessible online. As simple as it would seem to communicate that message, Avoletta says 2007 was the first year workers and their managers were convinced to do away with printed copies of performance reviews. "It's a learning process," she says. "Some people can't get away from what they did in the past." What finally did the trick? Seeing for themselves their reviews from 2006 safely stored to the system.
Avoletta says the lesson she's learned about altering employee behavior is the power of asking skeptical workers to try the requested change on a limited basis before dismissing it. "What we tell them is, 'Try it. We're going to go on a 90-day trial,' or however much time we think is needed," she explains. "I can tell you, every time we do a trial, I don't even get feedback. They don't even call me to tell me it's fine. I have to call them back and ask if everything's O.K., and they'll say, 'Oh, yeah, that's working perfectly.'" One thing is for certain, she says: You can't force your employees to go green. "If you force them to do something, they'll resist, but if you say, 'Hey, we think this is better, let's try it out,' then they're more open. They might say, 'Oh, you're nuts, but I'll try it for you.'"
The push to go paperless was given a boost two years ago when the company formally launched a green initiative. Says Avoletta, "We actually have meetings in operations to determine what we don't need paper for anymore."
Sidebar: Forest for the Trees
 The mission of The Rainforest Alliance is to conserve the environment partly by changing the way companies do business, but it wasn't until three years ago the New York-based organization reaped the ecological benefits of e-learning. The organization, which sends trainers across the globe to deliver live instruction on transforming businesses into green operations, signed on with e-learning provider MindIQ in 2004 to optimize the learning experience of those it teaches while reducing its travel-related carbon emissions.
"I wanted to give people more access to the knowledge we offer through our training system, so it would be available to them on an asynchronous basis," says Michael Thiemann, training manager for The Rainforest Alliance. He explains the organization currently is analyzing the amount of carbon emissions it reduces through use of e-learning, along with other "carbon offset investments" such as use of teleconferencing for meetings, energy efficient lighting, and more sustainable paper.
The organization, which trains at least 5,000 people a year in 62 countries, says e-learning will help it spread its message of conservation by making learning more accessible. "What we know is valuable," he says, "and the best way to get what we know out there is by bringing awareness up, being experts in what we do, and being able to provide that knowledge and expertise through training."
Sidebar: Did You Know?
• 1 tree makes 16.67 reams of copy paper or 8,333 sheets.
• 1 ream of paper (500 sheets) uses 6% of a tree.
• The average cost of a wasted page is $0.06, and the average employee prints 6 wasted pages per day—1,410 wasted pages per year at a cost of $84 per employee.
• The average U.S. office worker prints 10,000 pages a year.
• In 2004, the U.S. used 8 million tons of office paper (3.2 billion reams)—the equivalent of 178 million trees.
• The U.S. uses enough office paper each year to build a 10-foot-high wall that's 6,815 miles long. That's more than the distance from New York to Tokyo.
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper uses 11,134 kWh (the same amount of energy an average household uses in 10 months).
• Making a single sheet of copy paper can use more than 13 ounces of water—more than a typical soda can.
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 19,075 gallons of waste water; 2,278 pounds of solid waste; and 5,690 pounds of green house gases (the equivalent of 6 months of car exhaust).
• It takes 3 tons of wood to produce 1 ton of copy paper.
Sidebar: Quick Green Tips
• Think about green certifications affecting your industry, and create training to support attaining those certifications for your projects. Offering industry-specific green accreditation to employees also may be a good move.
• Focus on eliminating waste from your manufacturing process or business production cycle. Figure out what recycled materials can be incorporated into the creation of your products, and what product components can be switched out for environmentally friendly ones.
• Encourage your company to become a paperless organization by educating employees on how to do it. Show them how to manage their workflow and personal records without the paper pile-up.
• If you're worried about worker pushback to environmental initiatives, suggest they give the new business or manufacturing process a try for a few months so they can see for themselves that it doesn't affect their productivity or the business's profitability.
• If you aren't doing it already, or aren't doing much of it yet, look again at how e-learning can reduce travel-related carbon emissions. You'll make lessons more accessible to workers while reducing your training department's "footprint" on the environment.
• When your green transition is well on its way, make your environmental best practice techniques and outcomes available to other organizations. Encourage interested employees to present your company's green story and findings to local schools, thereby sharing eco-lessons with the community.
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