Last month, I wrote about one of the global leaders in sustainable business practice, InterfaceFLOR. As a brief reminder, they produce commercial floor tiling and have been focusing on environmental best practice since 1994.
PeopleProfitPlanet is now partnering with them to put on a series of breakfast events to highlight how they have embedded sustainability into their business practices.
Mission Zero
The motivation for their journey towards ‘Mission Zero’ (meaning zero environmental impact) is their ceo, Ray Anderson, who has inspired his team over the last 17 years to focus on continual innovation and learning. If you want to find out more about InterfaceFLOR, then I highly recommend Ray’s book ‘Confessions of a Radical Industrialist’.
Over the years InterfaceFLOR have tried and tested many different approaches, and recognise some have been more successful than others. In last month’s blog, I detailed what they summarise as the “eight things we have learned”. This month I’m going to give you a few highlights on what I picked up from Ramon’s last talk at a PeopleProfitPlanet breakfast:
- Inspire – outrageous targets work: not just 10 per cent or 20 per cent but ‘Mission Zero’. This goes to human nature to make people feel special
- Focus on the product – ‘Corporate Sustainability’ doesn’t work as people buy products not companies
- Life cycle – most of the impact is outside company boundaries – the 10 per cent that the company is responsible for is irrelevant don’t talk about “being a good corporate” but “competitive advantage for our products”
- Make staff feel part of the journey – ceo Ray Anderson always reminds employees to “keep on climbing”; it is a big mountain and staff don’t want to let him down
- Appeal to the higher ground – Who wants to work for a carpet company?. Interface has a highly talented workforce: sustainability is a way of attracting and retaining staff, not just about making money
- Make history – InterfaceFLOR wants to make history and this appeals to something human – being better than the rest and demonstrating what is possible
- Demonstrate importance of sustainability in the culture – for example, InterfaceFLOR’s ‘Sustainability Ambassadors’ are given status. There are three levels of training about sustainability, one of which everybody has to complete
- Encourage competition – the ambassadors have to apply for the position, this encourages positive competition
- Celebrate ideas and success – bottom up energy is lost if ideas are turned down. Ensure that staff are empowered to both share ideas AND come up with the implementation plan: encourage ‘legendary projects’
- ‘Pay’ staff with PR – status is a more effective motivator than money as it gives reputation in the industry. For example, Ray Anderson meets with the ambassadors, and some information is channelled only through them
Sustainability is important to different people in different ways – for example, ‘Mission Zero’ is all about waste to the sustainability director, it is a technical challenge to the engineers and a commercial opportunity to the sales team.
There is no related post.
