Workforce for Good: Employee Engagement in CSR/Sustainability

Workforce for Good™
Employee Engagement in
CSR / Sustainability

Copyright © 2013 Jocelyn Azada and Matthew Rochte

White Paper

CONTENTS

Workforce for Good™
Employee Engagement in
CSR / Sustainability

Introduction

1-2

The Findings

3 - 13

Cautionary Tales from Leaders

14 - 15

Conclusion

16

Acknowledgements

17

Appendices

18 - 19

Authors

20

Please contact the authors if you wish to use all or part of the content within.
Copyright © 2013 Jocelyn Azada and Matthew Rochte All Rights Reserved
To contact the authors:
Web: www.workforceforgood.com
Email: authors@workforceforgood.com

Workforce for Good™: Employee Engagement in CSR/Sustainability | White Paper


INTRODUCTION
Employee engagement is one of the toughest and often most
perplexing elements of sustainability and corporate social
responsibility (CSR) efforts. The level of employee involvement
and ownership is critical to the success of corporate sustainability
and CSR efforts. Employees bridge the gap between the
company’s sustainability/ CSR goals and the realization of those
goals. It is the personal day-to-day commitment, decisions and
actions of employees that direct the intelligence and resources of
the largest companies in the world for the good of our planet, what
we call a workforce for good™.
In a series of interviews from January – March 2013, 17 leaders
in sustainability and CSR in 12 Fortune level companies were
interviewed with one purpose: to find out how they engage
their employees in sustainability and CSR. This white paper
showcases the findings of those interviews.
The companies we interviewed represented diverse industries,
from consumer and industrial goods to healthcare, financial
services and consulting, and were predominantly Midwesternheadquartered global corporations. The responders all held
considerable influence in their respective companies. Twelve of
seventeen interviews were director level or higher; two interviews
were with a corporate officer and one retired corporate officer
who each reported directly to the CEO of their companies.
The companies were primarily Fortune level companies, with
thousands, tens of thousands and in one case, hundreds of
thousands of employees. The companies are leaders in their
industries, many of which have been recognized for their efforts in
sustainability and corporate social responsibility.
An interesting characteristic of our sample is that they are mostly
legacy bricks-and-mortar companies who have survived and
adapted through world wars, multiple economic recessions and
the transition to a digital, connected, global economy. Most are
over 100 years old with the median age of our sample companies
being 92.5 years, and an average age of 96.7 years. These
companies are evolving to respond to our current historical
moment with a concern for environmental and social issues and
opportunities.


Our research pool consisted of managers and senior executives
of companies headquartered in the Midwest: American Family
Insurance, Brady Corporation, Briggs and Stratton
Corporation, Jones Lang LaSalle, MillerCoors, Rockwell
Automation, and McDonald’s Corporation. Additionally,
we interviewed directors at two manufacturing facilities in
Wisconsin, one with Frito-Lay North America (a Pepsico
Company), and another with Patrick Cudahy (a Smithfield
Foods Company). A leader on the CSR team at health care
company Humana Inc., based in Louisville, Kentucky and former
CSR professionals from Marathon Oil Company were also
interviewed. Seven were Fortune level companies, two (Patrick
Cudahy and Frito-Lay North America) were subsidiaries of
Fortune 100 companies, three were ranked in the Financial Times
Global 500 and one company is not ranked in the Fortune 1000,
but is an S&P 600 company.
We wanted to find out what is actually happening and actually
working on factory floors with machine operators, mechanics
and engineers; in locally-based green teams operating within the
framework of global enterprises; and in corporate headquarters
by senior executives and front line staff. Our methodology was
to conduct interviews with corporate practitioners “in the field,”
at all levels, from different vantage points. We had one primary
aim, which was to learn: How do you engage employees in
sustainability and corporate social responsibility?
What we got was very “Midwestern”— solid, practical, “nuts and
bolts” information on how to engage employees in sustainability.
Common themes emerged from the collective experience of
the people we interviewed. In many ways, the principles and
processes they used to engage employees in sustainability/CSR
were not new. What these leaders did was skillfully, systematically
and successfully apply established principles of their management
experience to the goal of advancing sustainability in their
organizations.

Workforce for Good™: Employee Engagement in CSR/Sustainability | White Paper 1

INTRODUCTION

We identified the principles most common in the responses as representing the leading practices
of this work in sustainability/CSR at this time. Hopefully, they provide a real-world, hands-on guide of how to do this well.

These principles are:

1

Get Buy-in from the Top
Manage Their Engagement

4

Give Opportunities for Employee Innovation & Leadership

5

Align Sustainability/CSR with Corporate Culture

6

Incorporate Sustainability/CSR into Business Process

7

Use Multiple Channels of Communication

8

Measure & Track

9

2
3

Make It Personal

Recognize / Celebrate

What was the strongest message that came through in the findings? It’s all about people. Underpinning all of the responses in
our interviews was a focus on people. Those companies that were most successful in engaging employees demonstrated an active
ownership role in sustainability/CSR at every level in the organization, from the most senior executive to managers to front line
employees. Our data clearly pointed to this intentional focus on the human aspect of sustainability/CSR, and we underscore it
here as a contribution to the existing knowledge base.

2 Workforce for Good™: Employee Engagement in CSR/Sustainability | White Paper


THE FINDINGS
1

Make It Personal > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

An overarching theme common for our companies was making
sustainability and corporate social responsibility personal.
Connecting with employees’ personal values, passions
and interests was essential in their employee engagement
efforts. The more connected to personal values and passions
a company was, the more likely their people would engage in
corporate sustainability/CSR activities both in terms of overall
understanding and daily actions.
“When you engage people in a collective process
it helps them define what social responsibility
means to them individually. Synergy is created
when their values merge with the values of the
company. We don’t want to be telling people that
they need to do this for McDonald’s. It needs to be
something that they will do because they believe
in it for themselves.”
-Kathleen Bannan, McDonald’s Corporation

Our sample companies creatively tied the sustainability/
CSR program to people’s personal lives, values and interests in
a number of ways. Here’s how:
They identified the people already committed to
sustainability and made them champions. Every company we
interviewed relied on champions with personal passion - from
sponsors at both the executive level and staff and workers
throughout the organization to implement their programs.
“Here’s what I know to be true when you are
finding champions: you have to understand
who they are, what makes them tick and what
their values are. The minute you can have that
conversation, you will find a champion . . . If you
can connect people personally to whatever it is you
are doing, they will jump on the bandwagon.”
-Amy Mifflin, Global Collaborations


Many of the companies we interviewed defined
sustainability broadly to allow for wider appeal and
participation. Their platforms often reflected a triple
bottom line approach to sustainability/CSR, which includes
opportunities for participation in social issues such as
community involvement, diversity, and wellness, in addition
to environmental sustainability initiatives. Companies were
successful when they were able to create opportunities
for employees to make a personal connection between
sustainability/CSR and to something that mattered to them,
personally: their health, their finances, their family, and their
community.
Companies also used personal examples from home to
train employees on sustainable practices. These personal
examples helped bridge sustainability at home to sustainability
at work.

Bringing It Home:
The Action of Making Sustainability/CSR Personal
“It’s just like at home,” said Carter Hanson, Environmental
Coordinator at Patrick Cudahy, while he talked about his
method for discussing sustainability in his training sessions
for all employees. As a way to illustrate his point, he’d ask his
audience, “When you left this morning did you leave the faucet
running, the furnace cranked to 75, or the windows open? …
Of course not!” While there may be an environmental concern
component in the decision making process for employees, their
choices boil down to economics and risks. The bottom line is
this: it costs money when you waste water and energy. Carter
went on to say, “…Spend the company’s money like you would
your own. That is, everyone except Bob—his place is a mess.”
(laughter)
Taking a lighthearted and yet serious approach drives
sustainability home and makes it personal. It creates a story
that people remember and take to heart.


THE FINDINGS
Here’s another great example of a bringing-it-home story
even when you are abroad. This account comes from a CSR
training expert, Amy Mifflin, who works in the extractive
materials industries. In this trade, the early exploration and
land assessment processes can be very intrusive to local land
owners. When she trains the cowboy types, that tend to be
these assessors, she shares the following story: “Keep in mind
that if someone showed up in your backyard with a bulldozer,
you would step outside on your patio with your gun and say, ‘You
have exactly 10 seconds to get off my property!’ … Just because
you are in another country and you’ve got access to this land
does not negate the fact that they are community members and
this is their (house, land, livestock, and livelihood).”
When these assessors remembered this quick little story it
cut down significantly on community complaints and errors in
judgment. As Amy explained, “When people would get that,
they would think about doing the right thing. Treat it as if it was
your backyard. How would you feel if it was you?”

Getting Grounded with Corporate Community
Gardens: An Example of Local Engagement
Community gardens are an exciting way to get people engaged
in the community, build team work, and develop a connection
with the earth. They are a growing trend in corporate
engagement and a great way to “bring sustainability home,”
with multiple benefits for participants: healthy eating with
lower impact to the planet and a place to foster community
connection. Two of our interviewed companies host staff/


community gardens on their corporate campuses, Brady
Corporation and American Family Insurance. These
two companies have joined the growing urban agriculture
movement in the Midwest.
The Staff Garden, a community garden at the American
Family Insurance national headquarters in Madison,
Wisconsin is part of their overall sustainability and corporate
citizenship efforts. It represents both a literal and figurative
returning to the roots and engaging the community inside and
out. (American Family Insurance started out 85 years
ago.) It is known as a community garden because it promotes
opportunities for employees to connect with each other, share
seeds, stories, and gardening tips. It connects co-workers, their
families, and the community. Last year, 380 pounds of fresh
produce grown in the garden were donated to food pantries in
the Madison area.
Brady Corporation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has two 20x20
foot gardens onsite that are tended and cultivated by Brady
volunteers. Growing Power, a Milwaukee urban agriculture
non-profit, aided in establishing the corporate garden; they also
established one at Kohl’s headquarters. Last year, the Brady
garden generated 1,000 pounds of fresh produce that was
harvested and donated to Family House Shelter, an inner city
charity that makes on-site meals for guest families and delivers
fresh food to other needy families. Milwaukee-based senior
leaders at Brady have found that the garden is a useful and
pragmatic starting place for teamwork development—quite
literally, it provides grounding for their meetings.


THE FINDINGS

2

Get Buy-in from the Top > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
“You’ll hear this from any company you talk to: if
you’re going to make a commitment like this, it
starts at the top.”
- Bob Best, Jones Lang LaSalle

Getting support and buy-in from executive leadership is
critical to sustainability efforts. What does this mean? It means
that the CEO and C-Suite of a company understand and
prioritize sustainability and its strategic value to the business.
Executive support allocates resources and establishes a
corporate sustainability vision, strategy and goals, resulting in
enterprise-wide implementation, innovation, and engagement.
For sustainability, this can be the difference maker between a
great sustainability strategy that is a corporate priority versus
simply a sustainability project or program.
“It has to start with the top. When you have a CEO
and a senior leadership team [with] a strategy
that’s committed to sustainability, as a person
who’s in this department, that makes your life a
lot easier.”
-Kim Marotta, MillerCoors


You’ll hear this from any company you talk to:
if you’re going to make a commitment like this,
it starts at the top. That can mean a number of
things. I’m going to tell you what it means here.
Our new CEO, former CFO and COO, Lauralee
Martin, is more than an advocate; she is a
zealot. She was one of the first people in this
company to become a LEED AP herself. She
is a whirlwind, a green whirlwind. I’ve rarely
been in any kind of a meeting with her when
sustainability is not one of the things that she’s
talking about.
I think she believes in it for social reasons,
but she’s absolutely convinced it’s the right
business strategy. And that if we can stake out
the position that I think we are getting to that
nobody is greener than us, that is a great place
for us to be, business-wise. There is nobody in
this company that doesn’t know that this is at
the top of Lauralee’s list of what she wants to
see happen and so, we can get a lot done.
-Bob Best, Jones Lang LaSalle


THE FINDINGS
3 Manage their Engagement

>>>>>>>>>>>>>

While employee engagement in sustainability/CSR is a
challenging issue for many companies, the level of difficulty also
depends on who their target audience is. You have “a pocket
of people,” says Catherine McGlown, of Humana, who are
truly passionate about CSR and sustainability and easily adopt
and engage in it.
The next layer of people may not be passionate, but are
interested. They are the target audience for most employee
engagement efforts.
Then, there is the last category of people who are not
passionate, nor particularly interested. An often missed
element of employee engagement is employee management.
This sentiment was addressed by so many of our interviewees,
but none quite so concisely as Carter Hanson, who said,
“Never forget: people do the work that you tell them to do... It’s
their job.” If it is important to the company, make it important to
the job.
This is where managers can significantly impact employee
engagement.
Through their daily interactions with employees, managers
drive sustainability/CSR throughout their organizations by
managing, coaching, and inspiring front-line employees daily,
on a person-to-person basis.
One of the things managers and leaders tend to forget is that
employees watch and listen to what their leaders say and do.
They look for integrity and alignment. The most powerful
message comes from managers whose actions demonstrate the
company’s commitment to sustainability. “They pay attention
to what you pay attention to as the leader,” says Tom Collins,
Director of Capital Planning and Portfolio Management
at MillerCoors.


Managers have a rich opportunity to translate to employees
how their actions contribute to the fulfillment of corporate
and individual employee goals. Regular feedback and open
communication provide a touch-point for managers to seriously
inquire and engage with their people. Day-to-day contact gives
them a chance to ask, “What’s important here?” or “What’s
going on here?” from a place of curiosity rather than accusation.
This shows an employee: “My manager is truly interested in
what I am doing, and, what I am doing matters.”

“The biggest takeaway [we’ve learned about
engaging employees] was being able to
communicate to employees what needed to get
done and why it was important. Once that was
done, they went to work to figure out how to do
it. We get lost in technology or technique and
forget about the human aspect of it…
For example, SABMiller’s breweries in South
America which we visited were very good at
taking metrics by the operators at the point of
control. When a filler operator charts the metrics
we’re interested in, it gives the opportunity for
a leader — the person’s direct supervisor or
plant manager — to have a conversation with the
filler operator right on the floor about what’s
important for our goals as they are talking
about what’s on the chart. This non-verbal
communication that what you’re doing is really
important… it’s magical… It seems so obvious
and simple, and it is so subtle and mysterious.
In my opinion, it is the key driving activity that
improves the entire process.”
-Tom Collins, MillerCoors


THE FINDINGS
4

Give Opportunities for Employee
Innovation & Leadership > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

Ownership comes from opportunities to create something
new, to innovate, to be a part of something, or to direct and
lead a project, idea, and its implementation through to the
end. Across the board, when the companies in our sample
fostered employee innovation and employee leadership, their
sustainability programs and their companies thrived. Employee
innovation and leadership create ownership.
All of our companies could point to concrete examples when
and where employees created and owned sustainability wins.
These took the form of leading green teams, getting a brewery
to zero waste, steering a company sustainability platform,
identifying big and small opportunities to conserve resources,
or innovating new product design with the environment in mind.
Interesting things start to happen when you allow the frontline employees to take ownership and lead the innovations.
When employees come up with a money saving or sustainable
idea, let them run with it. Allowing personal passion to
thrive drives change in an organization. Tom Collins, in
commenting about the leaps in sustainability that MillerCoors’
operations were making, spoke of collateral improvements as
employees engaged in sustainability. Some of those collateral
improvements included overall process improvement, quality
improvement, system-wide cost reductions, an increase in
morale, and productivity improvements.


“What am I most proud of? (Our team and
company) creating an environment where
people can create programs that are most
impactful and important to them so they
can honor the corporate responsibility of
the company. For some, it will be reducing
paper usage or energy efficiencies; for others,
[it will be] taking the stairs rather than the
elevator, recycling, vendors creating food plans
that eliminate waste, or using compostable
containers. They choose what makes sense to
them and [what they] feel comfortable with
rather than it being forced onto them.”
-Catherine McGlown, Humana Inc.

“I’ll give you an example. There’s a gentleman
whose name is Kelly Harris, and he works
within our brewery in Trenton. Just three years
ago, he was really proud of our efforts among
our breweries to recycle waste. We reused,
recycled, at that time, more than 98 percent of
our waste and were then up to 99 percent. But
he looked around, and thought, ‘You know
what? That’s good, but we can close this gap.’
And he said, ‘I can make Trenton (facility) the
first zero-waste brewery within the MillerCoors
system.’ And he sat down and he made it very
simple to get people involved. Everything from
color-coding to signage to looking at new
opportunities. Within a relatively short timeframe, Trenton was zero waste. People were
motivated and inspired and excited about that,
and he challenged the other breweries within
the system, and then he went and he worked
with them. We now have four breweries that are
zero-waste. And really, without exaggeration,
(it is) because of Kelly. So that’s a person who
is inspiring, motivating, and makes things
happen.”


THE FINDINGS
5

Align Sustainability/CSR with
Corporate Culture > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

In the high-performing employee engagement companies that
we interviewed, sustainability/CSR was in alignment with their
core corporate culture.
At Humana, their sustainability platform is “Healthy People,
Healthy Planet, and Healthy Performance,” a platform which
reflects their mission and is an expression of the triple bottom
line. Catherine McGlown spoke about how easy it is to
connect the dots between human health and well-being and a
healthy planet. She said, “Focusing on the literal environment
has a huge impact on wellness from air quality to bike paths
to multigenerational playgrounds. The physical environment
has a direct connection to one’s physical, mental, and spiritual
health.”


Similarly, MillerCoors’ sustainability “brand” is “Great Beer,
Great Responsibility™®” referencing both its long history
of excellence and quality in beer making and now its strong
commitment to performance in environmental and social
responsibility. Its program is comprehensive in its approach,
with five components addressing the company’s impacts
and operations: responsibility, environmental stewardship,
a sustainable supply chain, investments in people and
communities, and ethics and transparency. Its program is
implemented well, with concrete examples of measurable goals
and accomplishments in all of these areas.
Rockwell Automation, an award-winner for their ethics
and safety programs, puts its existing culture to work in its
sustainability efforts. Rockwell Automation is cleverly
leveraging the peer-to-peer coaching that has already
proven successful in their company’s mature safety culture
and applying it to sustainability. People watch out for each
other and coach and guide each other to do the right thing.
It is positive social peer pressure, sustainability training, and
employee engagement all at once. The trick is to educate the
peers and focus their attention.


THE FINDINGS
6 Incorporate Sustainability/CSR

into Business Process > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >

When sustainability was seen as a core value driver for their
business, the companies in our sample figuratively put the stake
in the ground: “We are committed to sustainability, not just because
it is good for the environment, but because it is fundamentally good
for our business.”

“There’s a reason…it is part of our business.
Sustainability and energy savings maybe five or
six years ago was an interesting side note, when
a lot of people were wondering, ‘Well, I wonder
where the heck this is going to go?’ Where it’s
gone is right to the core of real estate. Buildings
use far more energy than any other segment
of our society… So, buildings are a place where
we can have an immense impact, and what
our clients are realizing is that it’s really good
business.
If you can run a building much more efficiently
from an energy standpoint, you can come out
ahead financially. But what’s happening now is
more and more tenants are saying to us, ‘We’d
like to be in your building; how green are you?’
And the clients are saying to us, ‘So how green
am I? I think you need to make me greener.’
… So we’ve actually decided that we will be
the greenest commercial real estate company
there is, in a measurable way. We’ve been on
a five year program, and today we now have
more LEED accredited professionals than any
company in the world.”
-Bob Best, Jones Lang LaSalle


“We look at the five key strategies for
MillerCoors, and embracing sustainability is
one of the top five strategies. For us, it’s not just
about how people feel about the things we’re
doing; it’s a company commitment, a company
strategy, and a company vision. And we define
that. It’s part of employees’ goals and roles, and
really important to everything we do within the
business. We believe that we’re successful if
when you look at sustainability at our company
they’re not saying that’s what that department
does, but instead, that’s what the people of
MillerCoors do.”

What does it mean for sustainability/CSR to be
incorporated into the business? You know it when you see
it in the daily operations; in the products and services they
offer; in employees’ evaluation metrics; and when it is linked
to profitability, performance, and innovation of the company.
It is central to the business and becomes the lens through
which business is done. In that respect, it is no different than
implementing quality initiatives or continuous improvement; it
gets embedded in operations.
Rob Hendrickson from Frito-Lay North America
continually references the company’s commitment to
excellence in people and in process. Continuous improvement
is a sustainability best practice. At Frito-Lay, they have learned
that it is critical to bring the mechanics into the conversation at
the start of process improvement. It is far less costly to involve
them at the start of the process in order to avoid lost time,
money, and energy as opposed to retrofitting, uninstalling,
fixing, and/or rebuilding after the fact. Members of the
company evaluate what the total impact of a change will be, and
what the cascading effects will be on other elements within the
system. This was echoed by all of the engineers we spoke with:
sustainability implementation as continuous improvement.


THE FINDINGS
7

Use Multiple Channels of
Communication > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
“This is the thing. I can sit in this office and come
up with phenomenal ideas about sustainability
all day long but it is in the translation of getting it
out to the people—that’s where the rubber meets
the road.”
-Carter Hanson, Patrick Cudahy

The companies we interviewed use a breadth of
communication tools and media both online and offline to raise
the visibility and awareness of their sustainability initiatives
with their employees. Through consistent communication,
employees learn about what the sustainability/CSR program
is about, how they can participate, and why they should
get involved. Typically, companies further along in their
sustainability programs use greater numbers of channels
of communication. These are the most common types of
communication vehicles used in our sample:
• Posted signage everywhere
(bulletin boards, video screens, paper cups, printers, charts
on the production floor, etc.)

• Training / Education
• Management Meetings
(where a success story is highlighted, for example)

• Earth Day and other high profile events
• Volunteer Day
• Online via intranet, social media, blogs, etc.

Consider the audience and provide a good mix of
communication. For example, not all employees work behind
a computer screen. Where do your employees actually work?
How do they learn? Humana raises the bar on considering the
audience. During the month of November, their CSR month,
they actively engage in a two-way dialogue; they ask their
employees how they want to be engaged in CSR.
To make communication personal, Frito-Lay Beloit’s
newsletter connected the personal issue of taxes increasing by
two percent to energy savings at home.
Lisa Carroll, the Environmental Coordinator at Frito-Lay,
communicates with all the plant employees about sustainability
in numerous ways. One way is through their internal newsletter.
As we interviewed Lisa in January of 2013 the income tax for
the average worker went up approximately two percent due to
cessation of the stimulus tax credit. She found a way to make
sustainability personal and relevant by helping employees
counterbalance that income loss. The topic of her December
newsletter was on compensating at home for the tax increase
by finding ways to decrease one’s personal energy bill (for
example: turning off lights, switching to CLFs, and insulating
water heaters).
To make their sustainability messages stick, Jones Lang
LaSalle has branded their sustainability employee
engagement program internally:

(This may only be effective in office settings, if the employees
know about it and use it.)

•
•
•
•

Newsletters
Sustainability/CSR Reports
Corporate Sustainability/CSR websites
Lunch and Learns



THE FINDINGS

“One of things that we’ve done is we have tried to brand this ACT [A Cleaner Tomorrow] program
visually, so that it just becomes sort of second nature to people. So we have the leaf branding. You’ll see
it on coffee cups; you’ll see it on signage that we have by the light switches in our conference room…It
says, ‘Stop, look at me; think about what you’re doing.’ You’ll see that same sign by our light switches in
all of our conference rooms to remind people to turn off lights. We put it by monitors at desks to remind
people to turn off their monitors when they go home for the night. We put it on copiers as a reminder for
people when they go to the copier, [so they’ll think], ‘Do you really have to print this? If you really do, can
you print it double-sided? Do you really need to print that in color?’ So it’s just all these messages that we
have put out over the years. And the thought is that the first time somebody sees the leaf they say, ‘What
is that?’ Then after that, it’s a trigger: ‘Oh yeah, ACT, that means sustainability, I’ve got to stop and think
about what I’m doing’. We hope the red leaf makes all the messages stick.”
-Chuck Kelly, Jones Lang LaSalle



THE FINDINGS
8 Measure & Track Progress

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

The adage, what gets measured gets done, was exemplified by
the successful programs in our study. They tracked awareness,
participation, and performance metrics. Attention and interest
rise as sustainability/CSR practices are measured and tracked.
Measuring sustainability on a personal scale gets results.
Whether a company is using six sigma, TQM, or ISO
9000/14000/26000, their success comes down to
measurement and tracking. When the outcomes of work are
being measured and the quality and success of that is work
is shown to be important by managers, leaders, and senior
management, employees engage. MillerCoors uses SIC
(Short Interval Control) to break down complicated processes
into immediate and task-oriented measurements that provide
nearly instantaneous feedback. These metrics are most
effective when selected by front-line employees who work with
specific issues on a day-to-day basis.

A strong example of making sustainability personal and
measuring is found at Frito-Lay North America, where,
according to Rob Hendrickson, “engagement is an expectation
of your job. . . employee engagement is a key performance
measure defined as engagement outside the scope of your
work every single month to drive results.” In fact, Frito-Lay
holds one-to-one meetings between direct managers and
employees every period to discuss, “What did you do last period
beyond the scope of your work to drive results?”
There are opportunities to integrate sustainability/CSR metrics
for employee performance throughout an organization from
improving packaging to reducing energy and waste, to human
resources to operations to facilities management. Every
employee can play a part.

A Personable Way to Measure
Briggs and Stratton’s Milwaukee facilities have taken an interesting approach to tracking participation in
sustainability events and to keeping sustainability uppermost in mind throughout the year with their Green Team’s
Sustainability Passport. The Passport is a handy, pocket-sized checklist of ideas and opportunities where employees
can contribute to sustainability in their home, their neighborhood, and their work.

The tool accomplishes several aspects of employee
engagement best practices.

5) It celebrates an individual’s successes through a point
system and gives rewards that relate to the company (power
tools and products the company sells).

1) It makes sustainability personal by incorporating individualoriented actions that relate to home and work life with a full
spectrum of topics (social, environmental, and economic).

Key components:

2) It utilizes gamification/ competition to motivate individuals.

• Uses a point system

3) It is broken down into trackable, measurable, and relatable
action items.
4) It educates through multiple communication vehicles
(such as linking to the company’s Sharepoint site, highlighting
sustainability week activities, and encouraging further
education and exploration).

• Developed by the local sustainability team
• Utilizes iconographics for areas of sustainability
• Highlights easy-to-attain, all at once opportunities
(sustainability week activities)
• Categories: sustainability at company education,
sustainability education in general, community participation,
personal (wellness), home (energy conservation)


THE FINDINGS
9 Recognize and Celebrate > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
Celebrating success and recognizing individual and collective
efforts for a job well done are hallmarks of our sample
companies.
Many of our companies distinguish themselves as best-inclass organizations and are recognized externally for their
leadership in their own industries as well as in sustainability
and corporate social responsibility. These company-wide
accomplishments benchmark performance, are a point of
pride, and reinforce a culture of corporate excellence.
Similarly, internal recognition is something individuals can
take personal pride in. It shows employees that their effort
and conscientiousness are valued contributions to corporate
success. Just as importantly, recognition initiatives provide a
mechanism for companies to systematically seek out, identify,
and point to outstanding examples of sustainability/CSR
behaviors and practices among their employees. Individually
and corporately, recognition can be a tool for improving
performance and valuing people.
Recognition of employees can take multiple forms, both
tangible and intangible. Many of our companies reported
their success stories in company newsletters, sustainability
reports, and other media—in effect, telling their sustainability
story through employees who bring their values and platform
to life. MillerCoors recognizes employees every month for
“being great and responsible” and features them in posters and
stories across the business. At the manufacturing companies
that we interviewed, employees are commended visibly for
their actions with their names, and sometimes their photos, on
TV screens and bulletin boards at the plants. Patrick Cudahy
calls these “High Five” awards. Brady Corporation collects
examples of sustainability excellence, shares them and asks
employees to vote on their favorite ones, further encouraging
employee engagement.


Recognition plays a meaningful and important role at
McDonald’s. There are established, highly valued awards
at every level within the organization, recognizing restaurant
managers, owner operators and corporate staff for excellence
in a very public and tangible way. In the area of sustainability,
McDonald’s has employed this practice of recognition, along
with two more aspects of its corporate culture—being both
entrepreneurial and family-oriented—to fuel competitions
to strive for ideas to move the business forward. As a
company that always asks how they can do better tomorrow,
McDonald’s has applied this mindset to recognizing “Planet
Champions” in different areas of the world and to recognizing
“Energy All Stars” in the US. Using the frame of a competition
with the biennial “Best of Green,” employees come up with
ideas for increasing energy efficiency or decreasing waste in
restaurants, for example. The best ideas are recognized and
the employees behind those ideas are held up as role models
within the organization and given a monetary award. In the
US, green teams in the corporate office and in some regional
offices sponsor competitions with teams of five people who
collect points based on actions they take to minimize their
environmental footprint at home and at work.
Frito-Lay provides a wonderful convergence of individual
and collective recognition. In 2012, Frito-Lay’s Beloit plant
received a national award from the US Environmental
Protection Agency, the Clean Air Excellence Award. One
of 11 recipients across the country, they were recognized for
their reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Lisa Carroll,
environmental coordinator, took two employees with her to
Washington, D.C. who were involved in the efforts, to receive
that award. A frequent winner of city, state and national awards
for sustainability performance, Frito-Lay makes it a practice
for employees who are instrumental in award-winning efforts to
receive the awards on behalf of the company.


One of the most rewarding and insightful parts of our research occurred when we asked participants
if they wouldn’t mind sharing a key lesson in sustainability that they’ve learned along the way. We truly
appreciate the courage and vulnerability these leaders shared when telling us these stories and our
desire is that future sustainability leaders might learn from them.
Loop in key players and potential
players before implementing.
One green leader shared this critical learning lesson. His
green team had come up with an idea for a virtual food drive
that would connect hundreds of pickup locations and create
a better delivery system to food centers. After creating a
website, communicating with the food pantries, and creating
both a communication and action plan, he finally approached
the community involvement/volunteer coordinator at his firm.
His response was, “This isn’t environmental and (environmental
issues) should be (the green team’s) focus.” The project got
delayed, shelved, and eventually dismissed. This misstep
outlines two key learnings: 1) By not involving this key player
at the start, he inadvertently created a turf battle. 2) Even if
a green team is gaining momentum, the corporate culture
does not always understand the broader, systematic, or
holistic nature of sustainability. In this case, it does create an
organizational learning opportunity to understand the social
dimension of sustainability.

Let local leaders lead.
All of the companies in our project have numerous bases of
operation regionally or internationally. To a large degree,
green teams, sustainability, and CSR initiatives varied from
site to site and company to company. A repeated lesson
learned in engaging multi-site, multi-regional operations was
to allow the local teams to be the leaders and experts in terms
of what programs worked best for them. Sometimes when
the corporate green team or leadership came in with “the
program,” it faced resistance and skepticism. However, when
the local team was engaged by the corporate green team
from the perspective of “What can corporate do to support
you?,” their presence was well-received, even if there was “no
budget” available, so to speak. (In younger sustainability/CSR
initiatives it was common that the sustainability efforts operated
without a budget, so the resources that they could provide were
in the form of support, time, and logistics.)

“In our early engagement with regional offices
we made a serious mis-step. We failed to identify
and capture the local identity. We overstated
the corporate agenda versus asking them what
should be done and how corporate could assist
them. That was a lesson learned.”
-Briggs and Stratton, John Mourand

Pace yourself and
celebrate small wins.
Sustainability and CSR programs can be small or large. The
large capital programs take time, resources, research, and of
course money and timing. We heard several stories about big
projects that are or have been on the drawing boards and for
one reason or another were put on hold. In the case of Patrick
Cudahy, a neighborhood prank with fireworks burned down a
third of their production facility, so a multi-year in-the-making
project with an anaerobic digester system was put on hold and
the opportunity was ultimately lost while the plant was rebuilt.
If you don’t pace yourself as a leader and a team and celebrate
the small wins, these pauses, setbacks, disappointments can
bring your momentum to a halt.
Pacing as well as communication about pacing can help
dissipate potential disappointment amongst green teams and
employees. Rob Hendrickson of Frito-Lay spoke to the
rolling five-year strategic planning and budgeting cycle of their
sustainability efforts. He commented that since it is impossible
to do all the sustainability projects at once, you therefore need
to spread them out with respect to their potential return on
investment. Typically a project has a one to three year period
from idea to implementation to return-on-performance cycle.
So by having a rolling five-year planning cycle, you can show
employees where a project is in its lifecycle.


Avoid too much communication.
One of the learning lessons heard from many companies was
a cautionary note about flooding employees with too many
resources and/or too many programs/projects. As Catherine
McGlown from Humana suggests, “Rally around one to
two items at a time… Let them appreciate having a focus on a
topic. Then, over time, as they build capacity, you can introduce
additional ones.”


People are very busy. So when we share
sustainability/CSR information via email or
intranet for example, we understand it is quite
possible that our employees won’t see it. What
we are trying to do more and more is integrate
the information that people need to get in
standard business communications. Instead of
having a standalone communication about CSR,
Sustainability, or volunteering – we integrate
it into orientation, training, performance
measurements, and recognition. These types of
tactics are proving more effective.


CONCLUSION
We set out to identify the current best practices in employee engagement in sustainability/CSR as applied at a
variety of Fortune level companies in the Midwest. In our interviews, we found that the most successful employee
engagement efforts include a diversity of methods to educate and engage employees. By making connections
to employees’ personal interests and passions, the companies could solicit the support of those on the front
lines and empower people to act sustainably. Using strong, visible support from executive leadership, the
companies could employ their CSR efforts from the top down. Another important tactic involved utilizing direct
management that takes a proactive role in managing employees to meet sustainability/CSR goals. In addition, it
was critical for each company to align their practices with company culture, to offer consistent communication
and varied ways to deliver that communication, and develop accurate tracking and measurement for
sustainability/CSR results. Finally, providing recognition to employees for their accomplishments helped show
them that their efforts are valued and are a critical part of corporate success.
When all of these principles were present, they formed the basis of a focused, forward-thinking, corporate
environment that clearly understands and realizes the business case for sustainability/CSR: attracting and
retaining talent; reducing environmental footprint and costs; innovating products and services; and enhancing
reputation and goodwill with all stakeholders.
There’s nothing new here, and yet, it’s all new again. Management gurus from Deming to Peters to Senge to
Collins address this core issue of people management as the key to success. It's all about people. Employees
are integral to delivering on the brand promise of their companies. As public expectations are increasingly
adding social and environmental values to the mix of how companies should behave, employee engagement in
sustainability/CSR plays a critical role in company competitiveness, reputation, innovation and execution. When
employees are engaged in sustainability and CSR, it shapes their thinking and their behavior, enabling their
companies to come up with new ways to solve current business problems and create new opportunities.



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We wish to thank all of the people and companies
who accepted our invitation to participate in this project:

American Family Insurance
Evonne Steger, Associate Vice-President Business Integration
Beth Churchill, LEED AP, Workplace Sustainability Specialist

MillerCoors
Kim Marotta, Vice-President of Corporate Social Responsibility
Tom Collins, Director of Capital Planning and Portfolio Management

Brady Corporation
Steve Hasbrook, Director of Sustainability

Rockwell Automation
Majo Thurman, Director Environmental, Health, and Safety

Briggs and Stratton
John Mourand, Director of Environmental Compliance
and Sustainability

Patrick Cudahy Incorporated
(a Smithfield Food, Inc. company)
Carter Hanson, Environmental Coordinator, Utilities

Frito-Lay North America (a division of PepsiCo)
Rob Hendrickson, Director of Engineering and Maintenance
Lisa Carroll, Environmental Coordinator

Fortune 500 Company in IL
who requested to be interviewed without being named specifically

Humana
Catherine McGlown, Corporate Social Responsibility Leader
Jones Lang LaSalle
Bob Best, Executive Vice-President
Chuck Kelly, Sr. Vice-President
McDonald’s Corporation
Kathleen Bannan, Global Director of Sustainability


Marathon Oil Corporation
Dan Sullenbarger, Retired Vice-President of Corporate Social
Responsibility has advised this project and has given his insight on
CSR programs in general.
Global Collaborations
Amy Mifflin, former Director of Community Relations of Marathon
Oil Company was interviewed for the project; she is currently
a principal at Global Collaborations and spoke about her
experiences in the CSR program at Marathon.


Appendices
Appendix A:
Defining employee engagement
“The definition is evolving,” says Kathleen Bannan of
McDonald’s Corporation. We asked each of our participants
how they would define Employee Engagement with respect to
CSR/Sustainability, at their company. Here are some of the
signature responses:
• John Mourand of Briggs and Stratton had a simple and
straightforward definition: “understanding sustainability and
doing something about it.”
• Evonne Steger shared American Family Insurance path
of Corporate Citizenship. Workplace sustainability was
defined as a “commitment to environmental stewardship and
social responsibility while optimizing economic efficiencies.”
• Steve Hasbrook of Brady Corporation sees employee
engagement as having three distinct stages or levels.
“The first level is: I know what Sustainability is. The second
level is: I know what sustainability is at Brady and this is what
we do at Brady. The third level is: This is what I’ve done at my
job, for example, I’m in purchasing and here’s what I’ve done
or I’m in Finance and this is what I’ve done.”
• Carter Hanson of Patrick Cudahy had perhaps the
most technically concise definition. Successful employee
engagement in sustainability is “realized efficiency
throughout the plant.”
• Rob Hendrickson from Frito-Lay offered a definition
which included discretionary effort: “Engagement, to me, is
doing things outside the normal scope of work to help drive
results.”


“I think the way we define (employee
engagement) is evolving. Traditionally we
considered employees engaged if they were
informed, if they understand what our priorities
were, where we’ve made progress, and where
we want to be. If they saw an opportunity to
do more, they would. They had the tools to be
effective brand ambassadors for McDonald’s.
We are now transitioning to a mindset of
individual accountability. Every employee has
accountability – regardless of their role, title,
or geography – to help the company meet and
exceed its CSR and Sustainability goals. It’s
the collective efforts by all that drive results
holistically.”

An emerging leading practice in employee
engagement was reflected in the definitions by Bob Best and
Chuck Kelly of Jones Lang LaSalle in having an impact
beyond the workday and workplace:
Employee engagement in sustainability
starts with awareness and then expands to
participation in programs and efforts that the
company supports. But we’ve gone a bit beyond
that; we’re also asking people to take it home.
- Bob Best, Jones Lang LaSalle

I think employee engagement in sustainability is
an understanding of sustainability as it impacts
your life. For us, it’s not just a workplace
program, it’s asking, ‘What can we do here in
the workplace to encourage people to be more
sustainable in their everyday lives?’
-Chuck Kelly, Jones Lang LaSalle


Appendices
Appendix B:
Interview questions
We asked each of our responders the same 3 questions:
• How do you define Employee Engagement with respect to
CSR/Sustainability at your company?
• What are you doing to engage employees in
CSR/sustainability?
• What has worked well at your organization? What has not?

Appendix C:
Further reading on employee engagement
For further reading on employee engagement in sustainability,
we recommend the following readings:
• The Engaged Organization: Corporate Employee
Environmental Education Survey and Case Study Findings;
National Environmental Education Foundation and Green
Biz Group March 2009. Based on a survey of more than
1300 professionals interested in business and environmental
issues, this study examines and presents a thorough analysis
of components of environmental and sustainability education
programs as well as seven in-depth case studies of how leading
companies are doing this.
http://www.neefusa.org/BusinessEnv/
EngagedOrganization_03182009.pdf


• Toward Engagement 2.0: Creating a More Sustainable
Company through Employee Engagement National;
Environmental Education Foundation and Green Biz
Group September 2011. This report focuses specifically on
corporate culture and offers a model for creating a culture
of sustainability through environmental and sustainability
education and engagement.
http://www.neefusa.org/pdf/Toward_Engagement_2.pdf
• Green Teams: Engaging Employees in Sustainability, A
Green Biz Report; Deborah Fleischer, September 2009.
This resource on utilizing green teams as a primary method of
engaging employees in sustainability begins with the business
case for green teams and paints a picture of a range of best
practices along with concrete examples.
http://www.greenbiz.com/research/report/2009/12/03/
green-teams-engaging-employees-sustainability
• White Paper—Corporate Social Responsibility and
Employee Engagement: Making the Connection; written by Bill
Holland, commissioned by Rob Gross. This white paper offers
a review of contemporary research in the area of employee
engagement and in its relationship to corporate social
responsibility.
http://www.mandrake.ca/bill/images/corporate_
responsibility_white_paper.pdf


AUTHORS
Jocelyn Azada has worked with CSR/Sustainability practitioners since 2001. She’s currently the CEO
of Promotional Product Solutions, a certified B-Corp company which helps customers tell their stories with
effective, interesting and socially responsible promotional collateral. PPS’ customers include Harley-Davidson,
MillerCoors, Marathon Oil Corporation and Dartmouth College. Prior to starting her company, she was a Sr.
Research Analyst in the corporate social responsibility group of the largest denominational pension fund in the
world, the pension fund of The United Methodist Church, with $14 billion of assets under management. She
has a Master’s of Theological Studies (specializing in economic ethics) from Garrett-Evangelical Theological
Seminary on the campus of Northwestern University and has been published by John Wiley & Sons, the
University of Indiana Press, Fortress Press, and socially responsible investing publications.
Jocelyn Azada, Promotional Product Solutions, (800) 218-4350, jazada@ppsolutionsllc.com

Matthew Rochte, LEED AP has been working in sustainability/CSR and smart business since 1994. Matthew
believes sustainability and CSR are fundamentally about smart business and innovation, and that they are most
effective when they create value through cost reductions, strategic advantage, engagement, and increased
sales. In the 90s, Matthew successfully ran and sold a triple-bottom-line (economic/social/environmental)
manufacturing firm in Milwaukee. Since then, he has been on a mission to guide smart business leaders through
CSR and sustainability. He works with business leaders to navigate the complexities of sustainability, to develop
a plan, and to communicate and engage effectively both internally and externally. He has worked with large
multinationals including McDonald’s Corporation to small manufacturing firms to international non-profits and
NGOs.
Matthew Rochte, Opportunity Sustainability, (414) 939-3594, matthew@opportunitysustainability.com

To discuss the project, speaking engagements, or consulting contact us at:
authors@workforceforgood.com



Workforce for Good: Employee Engagement in CSR/Sustainability

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