“A lot of companies have environmental policies, but struggle to bring them to life”
This quote comes from the Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development report ‘Motivated Staff Make Lighter Footprints’. Training your management and staff in skills for sustainability is an excellent way of bringing your environmental policies to life. However the impact of an organisation’s employee engagement will only be as good as the commitment put into its green training. To ensure a good return on investment, it is critical to ensure that there is sufficient time, money and thought put into a environmental training programme.
Over the last five years, PeopleProfitPlanet has delivered training for sustainability to thousands of staff in dozens of organisations, sometimes with over 100 people in the room or as little as four on webinar. What is apparent through all the work we’ve carried out is that the better planned the training the more success it has, both in the long and short term.
How do you get training participants engaged?
It is important when delivering green training that the direct engagement has a number of characteristics that ensure the participants gain the maximum value from their time spent in the training room or on the webinar. First and foremost, it is crucial that participants recognise that the green course is something that will be good not just for the planet, but also their organisation.
It is also very important that the training – and trainer – should be engaging, interactive and professional. If some fun and humour can be injected into the session, even better. An example of this is when we have delivered a three-hour training for ‘Green Champions’. The session is split relatively equally between considering the commercial and environmental drivers behind taking action (where they play ‘Carbon Bingo’), thinking how the Champions can become ‘Great Green Influencers’ and finally what and how they are going implement when they get back to their office.
Should you take into account different needs?
When planning and designing the green training programme we need to start by recognising that different organisations and people have different triggers and needs. This point was well made by, Ramon Aratia, Sustainability director at InterfaceFLOR at one of our recent events, when he observed that: “Every person has a different door” (see my previous GreenWise blog for further detail). Therefore, ensure the training is familiar to the participants, and also help them achieve their objectives as easily as possible and in a way that fits with their core job role.
How do you stop green training being a ‘nice to do’ activity?
However good the actual training session is though, it will only deliver long lasting value to the organisation if it follows a good management planning and embedding process (e.g. PPP’s E3Approach). This structure of preparation and follow up is very familiar to experienced managers and training professionals, but because some organisations still see sustainability as a “nice to do”, it is often ignored. It is important that people are excited and engaged even before they get through the door, and there is impactful follow up (such as a webinar) after the event to help them retain their learning.
So, in summary, you need to remember that old maxim: failing to plan is planning to fail!
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