Employee Engagement

By Barbara Wortmann, TFI Environment Consultant

Imagine a “suggest box” at a global electronics company in which—in only 3 weeks—1 in 9 employees submits ideas that collectively save the company millions of dollars and at the same time reduces the company’s carbon footprint. Far from being a wooden box atop a table at the Silicon Valley headquarters (where only half the employees sit), the “suggestion box” is an interactive web tool accessible to employees worldwide for submitting Lean and Green ideas.

This successful employee engagement is called the Environmental Heroes (E-Heroes) Awards Program. I am pleased to have brought this program to TFI Environment’s clients, from my experience as global environmental affairs director at Lucent Technologies. Employees’ ideas are judged by three TFI Environment business and technical experts according to ROI, environmental benefit / innovation, and feasibility. We enter the best ideas into the High-ROI Environmental Roadmap, which we create and execute along with our clients’ “Green Teams.”

We have learned through collective experience that employee involvement benefits a company’s performance. Companies have saved millions of dollars from implementing employees’ Lean and Green ideas.

The E-Heroes Awards Program recognizes employees throughout the company who have ideas (either already implemented or proposed) that will save the company money and achieve other quantifiable business benefits: brand enhancement, risk mitigation, and competitive advantage. We invite employees around the world to submit applications in the categories of facilities’ footprint, product/service design, supply chain, and other Lean and Green action items they predict will result in significant gain to the bottom line while reducing environmental footprint.

There’s nothing “fuzzy” about it: to fulfill its purpose the program must systematically predict and measure cost savings, revenue enhancement, and reduction of environmental harm (or creation of environmental benefit).

This program motivates employees to find Lean and Green solutions for their company, and delivers satisfaction from seeing their ideas benefit profit and planet. At one client nearly 60% of the E-Heroes ideas submitted a year earlier had been implemented, started, or considered for the following year.

Another great benefit from engaging employees is creating enthusiasm for the efforts and programs led by the Green Team. Enthusiasm is contagious and creates a buzz throughout the company, then in employees’ families. Customers, investors, suppliers, and prospective employees learn of the company’s success with the program because the “Heroes” are announced in newspapers and results are posted on the website. In some cases donations are made to environmental organizations of the recipient’s choice; this opens another avenue for press and communications.

If your company is an OEM, contract manufacturer, or supplier, do you think the E-Heroes program, or something similar, could be is a win-win-win for your employees, your company, as well as the environment?

Posted by Pamela J. Gordon, April 17th, 2009