Environmentally friendly organizations honoured for sustainability
Being a construction company, Aecon has no illusions about its work — it often has to tear down and bulldoze nature to build airports and buildings. But that doesn’t mean it can’t be an award-winning, environmentally friendly employer.
The company has several green initiatives ranging from smaller efforts, such as a paperless drive and fewer printers in offices, to larger steps, such as anti-idling technology in a fleet of 3,000 trucks, steam generators to reduce the use of fossil fuels and an environmentally sensitive airport in Ecuador.
“In a way, we’ve always had this as a part of our culture. But over the past couple of years these things have been redefined and labelled differently and now it’s much more part of the consciousness than it was before,” said Steve Nackan, Toronto-based president of Aecon’s concessions division.
Many of the renewable energy projects, such as solar and wind, are pursued in response to market and client needs and because many of the 1,600 full-time and 6,000 part-time or contract employees see “an alignment of these kinds of business ventures with their personal values,” he said.
“Through an aggregation of all of these things, we’ve seen the employees have recognized and are very proud to say the company is making a lot of efforts in this area.”
That pride helped put Aecon on The Green 30 list after Hewitt Associates — working from its Best Employers in Canada and Best Small & Medium Employers in Canada studies — ranked organizations based on environmentally friendly practices and strategies and employees’ perspectives on their employers’ efforts.
In assessing the top 30 and bottom 30, all the organizations had programs to encourage waste reduction, recycling and usage, said Neil Crawford, leader of Hewitt’s Best Employers in Canada study. However, differences emerged in other areas. In looking at the degree to which employers are paying for subsidizing carbon offsets for business travel, 24 per cent of the top 30 employers were involved compared to just four per cent of the bottom group. With event sponsorships, such as Earth Day, 73 per cent of the top 30 were involved, compared to 38 per cent of the bottom 30, and when it came to programs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the difference was 67 per cent versus 30 per cent.
“This reflects where we are in the development of these kinds of practices,” said Crawford. “If we look at the best employers and employee engagement, there’s not much difference in practices because they’ve been replicated, but we’re at a stage with environmental awareness where there’s a difference in practices.”
More than cosmetic changes at Lush
Since its inception in 1994 in the United Kingdom, Lush has focused on the environment and being socially responsible. That means no packaging for many products or reusable, 100-per-cent post-consumer recycled or biodegradable packaging. The bath and beauty products manufacturer and retailer has always tried to cut down on the use of synthetics and preservatives and creates solid products to cut down on the consumption of water.
But in the past few years, the chain stepped up its efforts to ensure it is doing everything it can to keep its business green, said Erika Edwards, a retail campaign co-ordinator at Lush in Vancouver. Just recently, the Canadian contingent, which has about 700 workers and 49 retail stores, kicked off an energy challenge in Toronto and Vancouver, championing retail outlets to cut down energy consumption by 15 per cent for the chance to win bikes to run errands.
At some of its facilities, composting was introduced in the kitchens and timers were put on lights in common areas to lower energy usage. Lush also signed on with renewable electricity provider Bullfrog Power in Toronto and hopes to extend that long term into retail shops and manufacturing facilities.
Lush also has a green team that helps drive its green direction and is in the midst of hiring a full-time green officer, said Edwards.
“It’s been very grassroots and organic in the making, no one’s really said, from the top-down, ‘We need a green team,’” she said.
For some organizations, being green is very central to what they do, it’s part of the employment deal, people go and work there because of that philosophy and how they conduct business, said Crawford.
“There’s no question, if you already have reasonably good engagement… it’s going to be far easier to do anything around this, because people are with you, they trust you, you’ve taken care of a lot of the basics.”
Paper company chops down waste
Green initiatives have been part of Cascades, another Green 30 employer for 2010, for decades, according to Valerie Demers, project manager of sustainable development at the Kingsley Falls, Que.-based paper products company. The founders were in the recovery business and part of their philosophy is about zero waste, she said.
“It’s been part of our DNA since 1964 and it’s just evolved,” said Demers. “It’s been more in fashion these years but we were already there.”
The company tries to use as little virgin fibre as possible in its products and a carbon footprint brochure, titled “It’s Time to be Transparent,” explains Cascades’ renewable sources of energy. The company is also committed to helping create a set of international reporting standards for the fine paper product category and received several certifications from groups such as EcoLogo and the Chlorine Free Product Association.
Having published sustainable development reports since 2004, the company recently started to develop a sustainable development plan, looking at social and environmental areas.
“We can identify our main strategic orientation and now we try to develop some indicators to really measure our progress in sustainable development,” said Demers. “We need to have structure.”
By 2014, the company also wants to develop training in sustainable development for all of its 12,000 workers.
“To be a leader in sustainable development, we have to make all employees very convinced about what we do in sustainable development,” said Demers.
The other side
Green makes some employees see red
A potential downside to the green movement came to light recently when a “Make a Green Choice” program at a hotel in Toronto was in the news after workers complained the initiative was not as it seemed. While guests are encouraged to be environmentally friendly by declining housekeeping (to receive a food and drink voucher from the hotel), cleaning staff said this change has complicated their work schedules and, ultimately, meant they have to take extra time and cleaning supplies to clean the rooms.
Employers may put a lot of focus around green initiatives but there’s a risk if they don’t do a lot of the basics around the employment relationship, said Neil Crawford, leader of Hewitt’s Best Employers in Canada study.
“If you don’t have effective managers, you don’t have leaders who are trustworthy, you’re not giving employees good feedback about what they need to do to help the organization be successful, you’re not coaching them to be successful, not doing the basic things we know drive engagement, then if you put a big thrust around community and environment, you could get a lot of negative reaction.”
The other thing that’s noticeable among employers on the The Green 30 list is there’s a lot of employee involvement, from the bottom-up, he said.
“The ones rising to the top are the ones where employees have been quite deeply involved in initiatives and been part of it and they’ve had an ability to shape it to a certain degree in a way that is respecting the two sides of the employment deal.”
Aecon has avoided green washing, particularly because it’s a construction company where a lot of what it does is not necessarily friendly to the environment, said Steve Nackan, Toronto-based president of Aecon’s concessions division.
“We haven’t pushed any programs that we’ve had to worry about here; it’s all been generated from where the interests of the employees lie and in a large respect by the evolving agendas of our clients.”
While Lush has had no major obstacles or resistance to its green plans from employees, that’s not to say something won’t come up, said Erika Edwards, a retail campaign co-ordinator at Lush.
“Anything we’d be doing, I don’t think would negatively impact employees,” she said. “I don’t think anybody feels it’s green washing or we’re not being authentic in our efforts.”
