Green Skills and Training Special: Recruiting and retaining the green collar worker

"The financial crisis and recent environmental crises have prompted both employees and employers to think more about the environment and issues of sustainability," she says. "There is also an understanding that the values of talented employees are changing and that organisational purpose and corporate responsibility are increasingly important."

Green recruitment
One way in which many organisations are choosing to demonstrate their increasing corporate responsibility and environmental awareness is through their branding – Standard Chartered double-meaning strapline 'here for good’ is just one example.

According to Trewin Restorick, ceo of environmental consultancy Global Action Plan (GAP), such branding is now recognised by organisations as an increasingly important weapon in the recruitment armoury. "When they go out to universities and do the milkround they are really pushing their environmental credentials because they know it’s a question they are increasingly asked by the graduate workforce they want to recruit," he says.

Paul Gosling, operations director at sustainability recruitment specialists, Allen & York, agrees: "The evidence, for me, is the 'Sunday Times Green List’ [which aims to identify the best green companies]. That’s primarily driven by a desire to promote what people call 'the recruitment brand’ – companies work quite hard to develop and define why they believe individuals should come to work for them, and a significant number are doing so through their green credentials."

Making a similar point, Matt Churchward, director of the Green Recruitment Company, cites the example of Unilever, which, he said, has made sustainability core to its central business plan: "By publicly stating this and re-iterating it, it engages the right sort of employees."

Words are not enough, however, and Gosling warns: "People see through greenwash quite quickly." Green words may get staff onboard, but they won’t stay long if green words aren’t backed up by green actions," he suggests.


Green retention
According to Restorick there is generally a "lesser degree of sophistication around using environmental activity to retain existing staff." One reason for this, he says, is that "most environmental initiatives are still driven by the CSR team and the HR team tend to be slightly removed from the process."

Others make a similar point about the marginal role of HR, but there are exceptions that prove the rule – one being documents company Arena Group, where sustainability, and CSR in general, fall squarely under the remit of HR.

"The environmental policy is overseen and updated by HR," explains group HR manager Martin Wright. "The HR department seeks employee views on sustainability issues, particularly through the annual employee survey, and then presents these for action at board level. The HR department is also responsible for the area we term 'giving something back’ and ensures that any issues in this domain remain high on the company agenda."

Restorick believes more organisations may eventually do more to exploit the potential of HR to further their environmental objectives. "Some companies are linking their annual bonus or a percentage of annual bonus to sustainability performance. It’s a very, very small number but some leading companies are beginning to do that and I think that’s indicative of where the thing might be heading," he says.

Anna Kane, founder of environmental recruitment and development advisers Ampleo, suggested that fully involving HR in the overall CSR strategy is just another way an organisation demonstrates that, as far as environmental issues are concerned, "actions speak louder than words".

She said: "Basically, if an organisation has its own objectives sorted out, they can build these into the employees’ objectives and these can be linked quite simply to an appraisal system or a bonus system, if that’s how a company functions."


Green recognition schemes
Certainly, a growing number of companies have introduced recognition and award schemes to reward good environmental performance by individuals or teams of employees. Again, these may have been introduced, say, as part of an environmental management system and may not be 'owned’ by the HR team, but any scheme that rewards a particular type of performance has the potential to help an organisation motivate and retain its workforce.

Graham Simmonds, managing director of online eco store Green Rewards, has around a dozen corporate clients that offer its products in staff incentive schemes. Royal Mail, for example, is using Green Rewards’ 'green points’ to encourage employees to reduce the amount of energy they consume.

"We are keen to incentivise things like walk to work, reducing energy at work – all things which most organisations know they want and need to do – it’s just a question of how they keep their people engaged," explains Simmonds.

But Simmonds would also like to see green rewards being more widely used in more mainstream incentive schemes. "So it’s not just about rewarding with green for being green, but saying 'why don’t we reward with green for everyday actions like good attendance?’." One client that has already gone down this route is the management consulting company, Accenture, which offers Green Rewards’ vouchers and products as part of its mainstream staff incentive scheme.

Other green employee benefits
Of course green benefits are not only given to reward performance, but in many cases are included in the main package of employee benefits to which all staff are entitled.

The broadcaster Sky is one company that has a track record in offering green benefits. A spokesperson confirmed that it currently offers, among other things, a cash incentive scheme for the purchase of hybrid cars, allowing staff not only to purchase a hybrid car at a discount, but also receive £1,300 gross cash-back. It has also recently launched an internal staff cycling portal where staff can find out more about opportunities to get involved with cycling, such as free lunchtime led cycle rides.

Often a benefits package that includes green perks will be structured as a 'flexible benefits’ plan, which means – subject to limitations – employees can pick and choose which benefits they want, according to their personal needs and tastes.

Lots of companies offer the odd green benefit as part of their mainstream flexible benefits schemes – such as cycle-to-work subsidies, bus passes and green car leasing. In many cases these take advantage of Revenue-approved 'salary sacrifice’ arrangements which effectively swap pay on which tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs) are payable for a more tax-efficient benefit, thereby saving income tax and/or NICs.

Carbon offsetting, offered through organisations like the ClimateCare, has also been introduced in a number of flexible benefit schemes, including those of First Direct, J D Wetherspoon and Nationwide. Carbon offsetting enables the employees to calculate the amount of carbon they produce and then offset it – for example, by donating to an appropriate environmental charity through payroll deduction. Charity contributions are eligible for income tax relief if made by the individual via an appropriate arrangement that meets Revenue guidelines.

Other 'green benefits’ might include the option of working from home and making so-called 'ethical investment’ options available as part of a group personal pension scheme.

Although there are lots of examples of individual organisations offering green benefits, it seems fair to say that environmental concerns have yet to have a major impact on the way most UK organisations approach their benefit and reward strategy.

Green training
If green benefits and reward are going to move from the margins into the mainstream, one of the strongest drivers is likely to be increased demand from a more environmentally aware and active workforce.

Ironically, many organisations may be creating this demand for themselves through the environmental training they are offering their staff. As Churchward put it: "A lot of work is done on the behavioural side of things – especially on energy management – for example the likes of Tesco and similar companies place a lot of emphasis on educating and changing the behaviours of employees."

Although it’s initiatives like Sainsbury’s Carbon Academy – which aims to train 20,000 people in environmental awareness and skills by 2020 – that hit the headlines, many SMEs are also in the process of training staff to meet the new business sustainability agenda. Companies that want to supply the likes of Sainsbury’s, Tesco and M&S, or win public sector contracts, have to be able to prove their green credentials.

One potentially significant initiative in this respect has been taking place at Lloyds TSB, where so far some 500 relationship managers have been trained to advise clients on managing their environmental risks and seizing emerging opportunities.

Viv Hignell, senior manager sustainable development, explains the ethos: "We have an understanding of our responsibility to get UK plc up and running. We have a responsibility to our existing customers and the ones we want to attract to help them to be successful and I guess that we have a pretty clear understanding that for businesses to be successful, they’ve got to tackle the issues and challenges of low carbon and climate change and make the most of the business opportunities."

How green is HR?
The impact of environmental issues on HR so far seems piecemeal and patchy – 'seems’ because, at present, there is a paucity of hard data out there, though the work currently being undertaken by the CIPD may go some way to address this.

Adam Woodhall, director at of sustainability advisers PeopleProfitPlanet, describes 'green reward’ in particular as an 'immature market’. The same could be said of green HR in general.

This 'immaturity’ shows itself, suggests Woodhall, when an organisation says: ’we’ve come up with this great green reward tool that will change our whole business and make us environmentally sustainable’ and then is surprised when only 10 per cent of staff get involved.

His message is that organisations need to think as strategically and holistically about sustainability as they would about any other part of their operation: "The organisations that are getting value out of this are the ones looking at it in a broad way," he says.

Some organisations have undoubtedly seen their green ambitions stalled by the economic downturn. "The amount of money companies have to invest in that kind of thing is less than it was a couple of years ago and its also the case that candidates are realising that they need a job and are less bothered about the niceties than they would have been in other circumstances," commented Gosling.

However, he added that: "Companies are still putting a lot of money into CSR and the sustainability agenda and one of the reasons they do this is that good people still look to see what sort of organisation they are joining."

Wayne Harrington, product manager-rewards and loyalty, at employee incentives company Edenred, made a similar point: "The underlying commitment of people has not changed and although green issues are not currently making as many headlines, companies need to align their strategies for the mid-to-long term and green issues remain a passionate and important motivational factor for people’s attitude to their employer, their workplace and their sense of worth."