ON-LINE Workshop - Employee Engagement for Sustainability May 5, 2011

Closing the Sustainability Gap -

Join a “living laboratory” in this ON-Line Employee Engagement Workshop. Understand the research and science behind successful principles and practices for employee engagement for sustainability. Design a program for your company or Green Team and assess your current program against best practices while learning from peers.

Employee engagement can be the key to the long term success of your sustainability and social responsibility initiatives. Broadly, it can also predict organizational success, financial performance and employee outcomes such as retention and attraction. Research shows a "systems" approach to employee engagement for sustainability can be powerfully successful. When we connect with the Whole "thinking, feeling, willing, social self" - employees throughout the organization respond in surprising ways.

The “engagement gap” is costing North American businesses in excess of $ 300 billion in lost productivity each year. Sustainability is the real key to closing this gap. It provides employees with the reason, opportunity, freedom and knowledge to engage in meaningful, impactful outcomes. At a time when environmental and social sustainability needs to sweep through businesses at an unprecedented rate, employee engagement offers the power to authentically turn organizational culture toward tackling deep environmental, social and economic challenges. It is through engaged employees that your organization will actually “walk the talk”.

In this ON-LINE, Hands-On, Workshop we will provide you with proven practices to implement and sustain your employee engagement program and demonstrate how tools such as branding can accelerate the delivery of sustainability’s economic, environmental and social benefits to your company.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Using examples, case studies, best practices and hands-on activities, you will:

•Create the business case for Whole employee engagement for top down & bottom up “greening” of a company.
•Understand and apply the Learning Engagement Model to your company.
•Assess your engagement strategy using the System of Engagement for Sustainability.
•Consider the steps and components in an employee engagement campaign.
•Examine the 5 key steps in successfully implementing sustainability strategies with employees.
•Understand and apply 8 tools used in winning employee engagement campaigns for sustainability.
•Examine the 3 steps of the Employee Volunteering Framework and the role of employee engagement in your CSR program.
•Understand the value of and steps in creating an internal brand and internal brand communications strategy for the long-term sustainability of your program.
•Evaluate how branding can accelerate the adoption, enhance buy-in and achieve greater impact for your sustainability efforts.
•Develop a draft action plan for employee engagement and branding for your sustainability and social responsibility strategy.

MODULES

May 5 – Understanding Employee Engagement for Sustainability

Can engagement in your sustainability initiatives give employees connection to a “higher purpose” resulting to greater productivity? Guest Speaker: Debbie Baxter, Chief Sustainability Office, Loyalty One.

In this module:

•Define “real” employee engagement for sustainability.
•Create the business case for Whole employee engagement for top down & bottom up “greening” of a company.
•Apply the Learning Engagement Model to engagement in your company.
•Assess your engagement strategy using the System Model of Engagement for Sustainability
•Use tools to determine the best place to intervene in a system for employee engagement for sustainability.
•Hear a Best Practice Example of Employee Engagement from Guest Speaker: Debbie Baxter, Chief Sustainability Officer, LoyaltyOne.

May 12 – Best Practices, Tips, Tools
& Approaches to Success

How do you engage employees to bring your sustainability strategy to life? In this module with Guest Speaker: Monica Daponte, Director Strategic Partnerships (including the Living Planet @ Work program) of WWF - Canada, we will:

•Understand how to maximize the effectiveness of the roles and responsibilities of Green Teams.
•Examine the 5 key steps in successfully implementing sustainability strategies with employees.
•Understand and apply 8 tools used in winning employee engagement campaigns for sustainability.
•Hear about the practical side of what works and what doesn't.

May 19 - Building an Internal Brand to Promote and Celebrate Employee Engagement Programs

Brands promote more sustainable behaviour by informing and influencing people’s choices. In this module led by Carolyn Nolan, ThinkSustain Consulting, a marketing communications company for sustainability, we will:

•Understand the value of creating an internal brand and internal brand communications strategy for the long-term sustainability of your program.
• Examine the steps to creating and launching this internal brand.
• Evaluate best practices for internal brand development for engagement.
• Create a step-by-step plan for your organization.
• See case studies and identify key success factors.

May 26 – Engagement in Social Sustainability Projects

In the rapidly growing field of Sustainability and CSR employee engagement is essential to every CSR program. In this module led by guest speaker, Chris Jarvis, Realized Worth we will:

•Examine the three steps of the Employee Volunteering Framework including:
o Performing an environmental scan and benchmarking against best practices

o Using a Canvas Design process to test and evaluate the best options for your company

o Implementing a employee volunteer program with clear plan, objectives, and measures.

•Explore tools for increasing employee matching, volunteering and giving.
•Discuss automating processes as prompts, recognition, rewards and feedback.
•Use Templates for bring together different types of employee volunteering and giving.

All sessions recorded so that you never miss one.