This Is What I'm Talking About

Today I received a link to an article on Chloregy.com that I think says it all. Unfortunately, when I did a search on the Chloregy website, I couldn't pull it up there. The link I have is through LinkedIn, so if you have an account, you can read it. If you don't, it would be worth signing up just to read the article (and signing up on LinkedIn is a job.)

The title of the article is "Why Pangea Organics Founder Joshua Onysko Thinks ‘Sustainability’ is for Slackers ."Anyway, I think Joshua Onysko says it all when he says sustainability is not enough. What a great philosophy!

In case you can't get to the article and don't want to sign up on LinkedIn, here is what I think is the key portion of the article (although there is other interesting information as well.)

Q:"How do you justify these added costs to your business?"

A: "It all comes down to the way our culture defines ROI (return on investment). Forever, ROI has been the bottom-line, and now we have the triple-bottom-line: people, profits and planet. The term ‘sustainability’ to me is actually kind of odd because I don’t want to just sustain as a human race, I want to thrive as a human race.

"The real ROI is the future. I think that as a human race, we need to stop thinking about the ROI and the bottom line of things. Because really, the benefits that Pangea provides [living wages, full health care, non-toxic work environment] are just the fundamentals if we’re to sustain and thrive as a culture.

"When people look at us and say, “Wow, Pangea is so cutting edge and so green,” I see our work as just the basics. Pangea is just a tiny company and if $10-million companies can’t provide basic necessities to ensure that their employees are being treated fairly and can afford what they need to also thrive, then really what are they doing? Why produce a product that is not supporting the future of the world?"

Web Conferencing

Web conferencing allows us to attend meetings more cheaply and without the carbon emissions travel would entail. I attend a lot of webinars and web meetings and have been considering signing up for GoToMeeting or similar services to host my own.

At a Greening the Workplace workshop hosted by our local Benchmark office last week, they mentioned DimDim.com as a service they were using. They mentioned the key word, "Free," so I checked out the website this AM and for small meetings of less than 20 people, the use of this open source product is indeed Free. I haven't tried it out yet, but it looks very similar to GoToMeeting and similar products. I will give it a try.

Planning for Sustainability

Yesterday I posted an entry on my companion blog concerning workplace sustainability. In it, I discussed initial planning I did when I started my company concerning corporate responsibility, to include sustainability.

At present, my company is very small. I don't know that I want it to get too big, but I wanted to lay the groundwork early to ensure that as the company did grow, we had the appropriate focus on values from the outset. From our annual meeting minutes:

"Board affirms that the company will consider the impact of business practices on the environment, the community, our clients and employees. To the extent practical, the company will conserve natural resources and develop business policies and practices to advance this goal. In addition, sustainability will include practices to ensure our human capital is valued and nurtured. To the extent possible, purchases will be made from local companies, providing those companies provide goods and services that meet sustainability goals."

As a companion piece to that:

"The board approves the following values:
· Operate ethically – always
· Keep our commitments to ourselves, our partners, and our clients
· Treat our clients, partners and employees with respect
· Collaborate with our partners to provide the best service possible to our clients
· Stay current in our profession
· Give back to our profession and our community

"The board wishes to ensure that ethics underpins all business policies and practices and that all employment policies and processes are based upon ethics as well. Appropriate internal controls and policies will be set up to ensure this is the case."

I am not sure how one could say their company operates in an ethical manner while ignoring corporate social responsibility and sustainability.

Presentation Tomorrow

Tomorrow I will be giving a presentation on "Developing a Sustainable Workplace" at 11:30 in Rm 189 in the Dillard College of Business Administration at Midwestern State University.

I am really struggling with this one--too much to say.

But ya'll come.

Related Blog

I recently started a community blog on sustainable living, "Living Green in Wichita Falls" at http://greenwichitafalls.blogspot.com.

This blog is focused on our workplace--the new one is specifically for individuals in the Wichita Falls, TX area.

Found It!

It's a good thing I cheated and kept a hard copy of the report I was looking for--the search based upon my memory was not working. But here is the new link to the 2008 Executive Roundtable Symposium on Sustainability and Human Resource Management Strategy on the SHRM website. If it wasn't such a good summary, I wouldn't have spent so much time looking.

Lost Report and More Resources

In an earlier post, I mentioned an excellent report from SHRM. Well.....SHRM revamped their website and the previous link no longer works. Neither can I find the report on the website now. I am sure it is there...somewhere. As soon as I find it, I will post the link again.



But in the meantime, I came across some more good resources.

http://www.corostrandberg.com/pdfs/CSR-HR%20Checklist.pdf
http://www.corostrandberg.com/pdfs/CSR_and_HR_Management1.pdf

The second is a report with details about the checklist items. This came out of Canada.

Presentation on HR's Role In Sustainability

Next week, June 17, I will be making a dry run of "HR's Role in Sustainability," an educational program I'll be doing for HR Southwest in October for our local HR professional association. I originally thought to present a program on my wider definition as discussed below, but then decided that so few HR managers are working in sustainability at all, it would be best not to get them too confused right off.

These dry runs have served me well in polishing programs for conference sessions, so I look forward to the feedback.

It's Time to Re-Engage

Where does time go? It has been forever since I have added to this blog. It isn't that I am not finding good information to share, because I am. It is just a matter of getting my act together to post that information. Look for more to follow in a more reliable matter. This is an important topic.