James Wilkins: Challenging Health & Safety Behaviour
James Wilkins: Packing a Punch
Dirk Mischendahl: The Fun Factor
James Wilkins: Two P’s in a Pod
Andy Payne: Perfecting the Nuances of Grammar
David Warner: Location Location Location
Alex Burrett: Defending Creativity
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The Fun Factor
BY Dirk Mischendahl
28th April 2010
Sus-stain-a-bil-it-y - not only is it a long word that’s difficult to say, it’s one with so many incarnations and definitions it’s hard to know what it means as well.
For some companies it’s potted plants and recycling every single post-it note that passes through the office, for others it’s getting out into the local community and reading to kids or picking up litter. It can also mean reducing office waste and carbon emissions or ensuring everyone in the office is happy and healthy. For me, it doesn’t really matter what you do as long as it’s fun and engaging and employees understand what your company is doing and why.
There’s so much heavy policy associated with sustainability these days that there is a serious risk that we’re going to alienate people by making it all too corporate. It’s all numbers numbers numbers and although BS8901 and other accreditations are very important to the industry, the practises involved should be second nature to businesses anyway.
We all get so bogged down in jargon we forget about the inherent feel good factor involved with doing our bit. Fundraising, contributing to the community and making the workplace a happy and healthy place shouldn’t be a chore, it should be fun and embraced. No one ever got engaged through a boring presentation, but they probably did when they went and got their hands dirty planting trees.
All too often businesses claim to be sustainable, but the truth is no one knows what it is they’re actually doing, least of all their employees. If you can get the right level of interactivity that has a fun element, it will help staff to understand and encourage genuine changes in attitude and behaviour.
If you don’t make learning enjoyable then you could miss out on invigorating your staff about doing their bit. Sustainability can help businesses save money and having a galvanised workforce to advocate it will make your company stand out from the competition.
So don’t be boring and traditional with PowerPoint presentations and recycling bins, get creative and fun and think of ways to bring sustainability to life. Encouraging cultural change is about engagement and innovation, not just a line at the bottom of an email that says ‘Please don’t print this email’. But just a thought, please don’t print this blog!
Read more of my thoughts in in my New Industrial Revolution blog.
LOGISTIK GROUP: Sweet caffeinated joy - http://youtu.be/M0D3jKLz6sA. Our Brenda (the vendor) may need a little update hint hint.... ;-)
What's most depressing about the end of summer?
| Lang | Value |
|---|---|
| The nights start getting darker | 2 |
| I've had my annual holiday | 1 |
| The fact it never felt like summer | 4 |
| That it's only three and a bit months until Christmas | 2 |
| All the girls put their legs back into wooly tights | 4 |
| All the boys stop taking their tops off | 2 |
| Nothing, autumn is an enchanted fairyland | 3 |
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