Shrm Central NJ Nov18 2015

How to Accelerate HR’s Role in
Sustainability:
The Next Big Step!
November 18, 2015
SHRM of Central NJ
Jeana Wirtenberg, Ph.D.
Transitioning to Green, LLC
How to Accelerate HR’s Role in Sustainability:
The Next Big Step!
(c) Copyright 2015. Jeana Wirtenberg & Transitioning to Green

Introductions
Transitioning to Green, LLC
Your connection between sustainability and success.
We assist every organization we partner with to…
• Align corporate strategy and operations with financial
resources, risks and profitability.
– Adapting your Purpose for Prosperity.
• Responsibly manage supply chains, material resources,
facilities and products.
– Respecting natural systems.
• Engage employee passions for creativity, innovation
and inspired performance.
– Nurturing your people to thrive.

“Enough …for all …forever”
African Delegation to Earth Summit II Rio +10, 2002
Envisioning a Sustainable World, 2050

Systems
thinking
Core Sustainability Concepts
Intergenerational
responsibility
Socio-economic
justice
Enough … … for all … … forever.

Human Resources and Sustainability/CSR
Perfect Together?

People Make Sustainability Happen!

Five Talent Elements to Align with
Sustainability and CSR
1. Attracting Talent
2. Recruiting Talent
3. Developing Talent
4. Engaging Talent
5. Retaining Talent
“It’s the talent that
makes it all happen!”

Learning and Development:
Embed Sustainability Training in All Functions
• Fundamentals of
Sustainability
• Marketing,
Communications, &
Social Networking
• Human Resources
• Strategy and Metrics
• Operations/Facilities
• Finance
• Supply Chain
• Greening Information
Technology

What if?
Every
employee had
goals around
sustainability,
working in
concert with
the business’
goals to solve
some of our
most
intractable
problems?
And every employee could articulate
what that means to them personally?

Sustainability happens when…
Managers make
decisions and take
actions every day that
take sustainability
gain and harm into
account.

Sustainability Pyramid Framework

THE NEXT BIG STEP IN SUSTAINABILITY IS
CULTURE.

BUILDING A CULTURE
FOR SUSTAINABILITY:
PEOPLE, PLANET, AND
PROFITS IN A NEW GREEN
ECONOMY
Jeana Wirtenberg, Ph.D.
President, Transitioning to Green and
Co-Founder/Senior Advisor, Institute
for Sustainable Enterprise, Fairleigh
Dickinson University

* Purpose of the book
– and at all stages…from those
just starting their journey to
sustainability to those who are
seeking to accelerate and
deepen their positive impacts on
people, reduce their
environmental footprint, and
enhance their financial bottom
line in the short, medium, and
long-term.

*Megatrends 2013-2050
• Growth of the Middle Class
• A Resource Crunch
• Persistent inequality
• Major demographic changes
• Urbanization
• Growing human health vulnerability
• Growing connectivity
Source: Richard Wells, “To Build Long Term Sustainability, Envision the Future First,” GreenBiz, 2013.

*Building a Culture for Sustainability:
Nine In-depth Company Case Studies tell the story…

*How do we get there?
• The good news is that
culture is fungible. It can
change, and business
leaders and managers can
help shift the balance to
sustainable mindsets and
behaviors by influencing
their own and others belief
systems and behaviors.

*How do we get there?
• Companies don’t need to resort to top-
down command and control, coercion,
or even peer pressure because…
• People already care about these issues.
• Companies need to offer the enabling
environment, encouragement and
reinforcement for people to contribute
what already resides within them!

WHAT DOES A CULTURE
FOR SUSTAINABILITY
LOOK LIKE?

Essential Elements of a
Culture for
Sustainability
• Sustainable Values
• Sustainable Mind-Set
• Leadership for sustainability
• Visionary
• Employee engagement
• Multi-disciplinary
• Diversity, inclusion, social
justice
• Wisdom

Essential Elements of a Culture for Sustainability
• Sustainable Values; sees organization in context of
community, society, and earth
• Sustainable Mind-Set; systems thinking
• Leadership for sustainability; leads with purpose and
authenticity
• Visionary: Envisions the future we want to create
• Employee engagement; builds agility and resiliency;
engages imagination; fun
• Multi-disciplinary; Embeds sustainability throughout
learning and development
• Diversity, inclusion, social justice; deep caring for all
people
• Wisdom: emotional, social, and ecological intelligence

COMPANY
EXAMPLES AND
BEST PRACTICES

A NOBLE VISION THAT EXCITES PEOPLE:
“We’re going to connect the unconnected world. We’re
going to make sure the 2 billion people with no access to
communication services for health care, for life, for
education, for learning have all that in the next 20 years.”

Employees find meaning, passion, and inspiration
in the company’s vision—“to realize the potential
of a connected world.”

They incorporate sustainability thinking into every job
function they perform, whether in procurement, facilities,
product development, network design, marketing, finance, or
Human Resources.

• “Engage”: Maximizing
Communication
through Social Media
• Collaborating across
Stakeholders and
Industries

Systems approach is the “Verbund”
concept, which permeates every function,
facet, and operation of the organization.
Verbund is an
interconnected system of
relationships generating
greater value than the
sum of its parts

Take the passion for problem solving, bring it
to sustainability and make that the focus of
the business.
8 ELEMENTS:
• Changing Mind-Sets
• Getting Close to Customers
• Finding Solutions to Intractable Problems
• Letting Science Decide
• Making the Shift from Functional to Solutions-
Driven Strategy
• Integrating Sustainability into Everyone’s Goals
• Creating Sustainability Champions
• Igniting Contagious Passion

BASF’s global people strategy is a comprehensive
approach to creating and maintaining a culture of
sustainability
• The global people strategy was
developed through future forecasting
and mapping the gap
• The strategy is organized around 3 categories:
1. Excellent people
2. Excellent place to work
3. Excellent leaders

Corporate Communications Programs for
Engaging People
• “We Create
Chemistry World
Tour”
• Simply Dare!

Case Example:
BASF Market Customer Focus Teams
• Action learning mode: “Anchor in the work that people
do and give them space to practice new behaviors.”
• Seattle Mariners, member of Green Sports Alliance,
pledged to divert 85% of waste from landfills.
• BASF team leveraged its material technology to create
100% compostable snack bags, made from BASF’s
Ecoflex.
• Created successful new product line using biopolymer
technology, now marketed to Universities and sports
teams worldwide.

• It’s all about Mind-set
• Respecting and Learning
from Failure
• Reporting the Bad with the
Good

• Integrating sustainability
into the way it does
business
• Manifesting it in how
everyone approaches the
work they do every day
• Instilling a sustainability
mind-set internally
• Helping customers
become more sustainable

• Capturing Employees’ Hearts and
Minds Through Employee-
Centered Initiatives
– Green Teams and Certification
– Sustainability Champions Drive
Change
– One STEP Forward – Personalizing
Sustainability
– Values: From Home to Workplace
– Life-Cycle Thinking

• Creating and Sustaining
Customer Value
– Segmenting the Marketplace
– Creating a Green Portfolio
through Open Innovation
– Outcome-Driven Innovation
– Applying ODI to Sustainability
Challenges at Ingersoll Rand
– Ingersoll Rand’s Green Portfolio

Sanofi’s 4 CSR Pillars“The key to a culture for
sustainability is full participation, to
make everyone feel they are part
of something greater and bigger.”
‒John Spinnato, VP of CSR,
N. America

“Because of Wyndham’s
massive reach and ability to
influence change, we know
it's important to inform and
educate our guests, investors,
employees and business
partners about being green.”
-- Wyndham’s website

HOW TO GET THERE

• Creating a grand vision
• Making the business
case: Sustainability is a
business imperative
• Starting at the top
• Embedding
sustainability in the
organization’s DNA

• Setting priorities and
making commitments
• Communicating with
authenticity and
transparency
• Recognizing
accomplishments and
disclosing areas for
improvement

BASF’s culture for sustainability is relationship
and people-driven
• Take the passion for problem solving, bring it to
sustainability and make that the focus of the
business.
8 ELEMENTS:
• Changing Mind-Sets
• Getting Close to Customers
• Finding solutions to Intractable Problems
• Letting Science Decide
• Making the Shift from Functional to Solutions-Driven Strategy
• Integrating Sustainability into Everyone’s Goals
• Creating Sustainability Champions
• Igniting Contagious Passion

• Take a Strengths-Based Approach
• Build Partnerships
• Recognize the link between Sustainability
and Premier Performance
• Tie Sustainability to the Company’s Brand,
Promise, Vision, and Purpose

• Create a Rallying Point and a Focus area for
Alignment
• Translate Sustainability into Customer Value
• Set a Small Number of Strategic Priorities

Evolving CSR/Sustainability
● Passion to help people
● Environmentalism
social consciousness
innovation
● Fostering a culture of
innovation
● Connect with
employees in every
function

• Tie Sustainability to
Innovation
• Integrate
Sustainability Fully
into Company
Strategy

Employee Giving Fund
and Volunteerism
• Volunteer
opportunities
• Partnerships with
NGOs

KEY TAKEAWAYS

Challenges
• Stuck in the Middle
• Competing Priorities: Too Much on
My Plate
• Dealing with Short-Termism
• Demonstrating the Return on
Investment
• Human Resources: Stepping Up as
Advocate and Enabler of Change

Key Challenges
• Managing size and complexity
• Creating a global and culturally diverse
people strategy
• Differentiating your company in the marketplace
• Filling the pipeline from STEM disciplines
• Getting buy-in for total cost of ownership and life-cycle
costing
• Spanning boundaries across industries and value chain

Lessons
Learned
• Create a shared focus on
solving a global problem—
such as the dilemma of the
digital divide.
• Make use of frameworks
and tools that have already
been proven and that work

Lessons Learned
• Culture change is a team sport
• Linking sustainability to business success brings
along even the hard core skeptics.
• Systems approach (e.g., Verbund) supports
embedded sustainability

Conclusion: People, Planet, and
Profits in a New Green Economy

Critical Issues and
Challenges that Must
be Addressed

Company Conundrums in Addressing
Sustainability-Related Challenges
• People-Related Challenges
– Changing Mind-Sets and Behavior
– Filling the Pipeline from STEM Disciplines
– Overwhelming Workloads and Competing Priorities
– HR Needs to Step Up to the Plate

• Planet
– Consumer Perceptions that Green Costs More, and
Finding a Workable Trade-Off
– Being Sustainable versus Touting It
– Tree Hugging, Cutting Edge, or Bleeding Edge?

• Profits
– Measuring ROI of Sustainability Initiatives
– Dealing with Short-Termism
– Working with Different Measurement Systems and
Methods around the Globe

Promote Well-Being
by Cultivating
Sustainability-
Inspired Habits and
Practices• Silent Reflection
• Mindfulness
• Listening generously
• Both-And
• Being, Satisfaction
• Caring, Compassion, and Service
• Gratitude
• Collaboration
• Balance

Thank You!
Jeana Wirtenberg Ph.D.
jwirtenberg@transitioningtogreen.com
Phone: 973-335-6299
@Trans2Green
@jeanawirtenberg
Transitioning to Green
www.transitioningtogreen.com
Transitioning to Green Foundation
www.TTGFoundation.org
Institute for Sustainable Enterprise
FDU www.fdu.edu/ise

Shrm Central NJ Nov18 2015

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Shrm Central NJ Nov18 2015