Organisations are realising the benefits of sustainability. But, says Ian Haynes, e-learning director at Cimex Media, putting up a few pages of static web page guidance might not be enough to retain your customers – or your staff.
Climate change and social networks
The way commercial organisations approach saving energy and minimising environmental impact is becoming increasingly important.
Not only is this driven by government through policies and standards but managers, employees and increasingly consumers are playing an important if not more powerful role in forcing change.
Some companies are early adopters in this area and are becoming known as leaders and innovators. HSBC are a good example. Nominated as the most sustainable bank by the Financial Times, HSBC is currently working with Cimex and Earthwatch to implement the online e-learning and social network aspect of their Climate Partnership programme.
Organisations leading the way are discovering that not only are they doing a positive thing for the planet, but they’re also opening up new ways of doing business, creating financial savings through efficiency and improving how they are perceived, by both consumers and business investors. Those who are rising to the challenge are seen as having the flexibility and management structure in place to be able to deal effectively with change.
A selling point for jobseekers?
Problems with staff recruitment and retention? Then take note, as existing and high quality new recruits are increasingly interested in working for organisations that have a good track record in this area. The benefit can be seen through increased staff retention levels and the quality of applicants.
The first step on the journey is to develop a company policy in relation to climate change and sustainability. The next is to put it into practice while engaging staff at all levels to refine and develop the ideas and implementation.
Some of the latest innovations in approaches to e-learning and Web 2.0 technologies dovetail well into the kind of change management, communication and collaboration required to make a company truly sustainable. Whether it is getting employees up to speed with company policy so they can communicate this effectively to customers or actively getting staff involved in developing and implementing policy, e-learning and social networks can play an important role.
Spread the word socially
Many of the ideas around climate change involve large numbers of people making a relatively small action to make a big overall difference. Social networks can help to bring this kind of activity to life and help illustrate the bigger picture.
A good example of this would be the development of a hybrid carbon calculator and Facebook style application. This application would allow users to calculate their carbon footprint which results in a set of short and long term recommended actions to reduce this. But – and this is where the similarity with most carbon calculators ends – the application would then allows users to record their footprint over time, view the footprint of friends, create groups and view aggregated totals of these groups. Apply this type of application to a whole organisation and you can imagine how small groups of staff, whole departments and entire global networks could set goals, develop projects and share their success stories.
What are the first steps?
It’s clear that becoming a more sustainable organisation will involve learning new skills and developing new methodologies. One useful approach for organisations may be to carry out an office or building energy audit for the first time.
By capturing the process and creating an e-learning package based on this – using perhaps rapid e-learning authoring tools - the experience can immediately be shared throughout an organisation. In addition, it should be possible to use a corporate social network to find an expert with the right skill so much of the learning will actually be done informally through direct interaction and knowledge sharing rather than just relying on the development of more formal e-learning modules.
Cimex are award winning innovators in the field of e-learning and the use of social networks for informal learning and our network of experts partners can help develop and deploy sustainability solutions which cover:
- face-to-face leadership training and on the ground support
- e-learning capable of inspiring and motivating a large workforce
- the infrastructure to engage employees and form powerful social networks within an organisation
E-learning provides an excellent means of:
- communicating the challenge
- providing the necessary background learning on issues such as global warming
- bringing to life the approach and policy – how different areas of the business are effected and what the response is
- highlighting new business opportunities
For more information on our e-learning experience, call Ian Haynes on 0207 324 7780.