The California Sustainability Alliance’s Green Tenant Guide was created to help organizations learn how to work with their staff to set clear and feasible sustainability goals, establish buy-in and excitement, define metrics, and measure and communicate results. The Alliance recognizes that every organization’s situation is different and helps guide organizations through the process of greening their operations and staff behaviors. The Green Tenant Guide is intended to be an ongoing reference for organizations as they work through planning and implementing their sustainability program.
As you work through the steps included here, it’s important to keep a few overall points in mind:
- Make it official.
Throughout this guide, you’ll see a lot of emphasis on the importance of leadership buy-in. Without leadership on board programs often falter and can be put on the backburner. While sustainability programs are often initiated by staff, eventually leadership needs to take a stance, and give the program its blessing.
- Make sure your goals are SMART.
Appropriate goals are a key element of a successful sustainability plan. They help you set expectations, keep you on track, and can be a main driver of employee engagement strategies. Because of this, your goals need to be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound).
- Don't make assumptions or oversimplify.
Make sure you understand the day-to-day barriers before identifying your program strategies. Many of the actions in a typical sustainability plan might sound easy enough, but until you understand why your employees don’t turn their computers off at night, for example, you won’t be able to create a strategy to encourage them to do so. You might assume that they just forget, when in actuality the IT department requires them to leave their systems on overnight for maintenance. Suddenly, a simple energy saving tip for employees has turned into a network maintenance issue.
- Make it fun and easy.
Sustainability programs offer a great opportunity for employee engagement and team building. Make program participation fun by coordinating challenges between departments and offering rewards and recognition as a consistent agenda item for staff meetings. In addition, try to integrate your program with day-to-day operations rather than adding burdensome responsibilities. It is important to integrate sustainability into regular job function rather than considering it a side project.
- Communication, communication, communication.
Frequent and clear communication is the most important attribute of a successful sustainability plan. You’ll need to communicate your goals and your progress to leadership, staff and other stakeholders, and you’ll want to recognize your accomplishments along the way.
We recommend that you, and your greening allies, start by reading through the Guide to understand its overall framework, and then start thinking about how to use it as a step-by-step guide to help ensure your organization is successful on its path to sustainability. First, you’ll be introduced to the “The Sustainability Program Process” which outlines the overall framework for implementing a successful program. Next, “A Step- by- Step Approach” will cover each phase of the process in detail through task lists and tools. Finally, “Specific Strategies for Greening Your Workplace" includes a comprehensive list of actions that can be implemented to achieve your organization’s goals.
Use the links below to view sections of the guide or download the full Green Tenant Guide.
