This article also appears as part of Changeboard's article on CSR and social justice by Natalie Cooper: http://www.changeboard.com/hrcircles/blogs/csrbusiness/archive/2008/07/05/csr-amp-social-justice-hr-carnival.aspx

Market your green credentials strategically and you could protect your bottom line.
Green is definitely the new black: it has never been so de rigueur for organisations to exercise their ethical conscience.

But is it really enough to lure in the next crop of 20-something grads? Quite possibly – a friend of mine told me recently that 14% of Generation Y would happily put their money where their mouth is by taking a pay cut to get on board with an ethically minded company. So there’s clearly a Machiavellian angle to all of this: being socially conscious can enhance reputation but also double up as a key marketing tool…potentially. That’s not to say companies should tow a tokenistic line and not practice what they preach in the marketing materials. Companies must not be fair weather friends and jump on the bandwagon: they must invest in this issue by ensuring it is visible in daily corporate life – ‘think before you print’ signatures are all very well but what about giving 1% of all revenue to a charitable outfit or carbon neutralising all foreign flights? Companies need to demonstrate deep commitment to pull it off.

Carrot, Stick, Reward?

We all know the power of incentives: freakonomists Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner told us that, for better or worse, incentives make the world go round. It’s a simple but ever-enduring case of quid pro quo: you give a little, we give you something in return - a gift, a reward. On this basis, maybe in decades to come, green commitment could feature on internal competency frameworks as something to measure staff against. Far-fetched perhaps but with CSR gathering momentum, surely not out of the question. And what better way to get staff to buy into the issue than by turning it into a performance metric. A friend of mine told me that he knows companies that reward employees for cycling into work. So seems like the wheels have already been set in motion…..