Green Wash Has Biggest Impact On 25-34 Year Olds
Insync Surveys shows that age has the biggest impact on employees' expectations of their employer's environmental performance; with 25-34 year olds holding organisations to a higher standard than younger and older employees.
Insync Surveys has asked 14,000 survey respondents how green their employers are.
James Garriock, Insync Surveys' CEO, said: "Promoting environmental efforts is important to attract and retain employees and customers. The imminent retirement of the Baby Boomers, which is the group with the lowest expectations of their employer with regard to the environment, means the issue will become more important to the majority of employees."
Level of education was also researched. Insync Surveys found that people in jobs requiring a university degree are more critical than others in their assessment of their employer's environmental performance.
"Professional services firms which are dominated by people with degrees are held to higher environmental standards by their staff than manufacturing organisations which have a lower proportion of tertiary educated people. This is ironic in that professional services have a lower environmental impact than other industries.
"Improving environmental responsibility helps to attract and retain a skilled workforce. In an environment of low unemployment, the importance of these issues is paramount," said Garriock.
The study also showed that organisations should pay attention to their employees' opinions because of a strong positive correlation between upbeat opinions of employer environmental performance and employee commitment.
"With heightened awareness about water, carbon, climate change, air quality and pollution and corporate social responsibility; environmental responsibility will remain strong factors in an organisation's employee value proposition. This is important for organisations trying to attract younger and educated workers," said Garriock.
Obtain a copy of the research paper: How Green Are We Anyway?
Based in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, Insync Surveys has carried out employee and other stakeholder surveys for some of the largest organisations in the Asia Pacific region. This experience allows it to benchmark results. Insync Surveys' organisational psychologists help organisations improve their performance and the working lives of their people. Visit: www.insyncsurveys.com.au call 08 6461 6485, 02 9114 9884 or 03 9909 9222.
First published: 1 September 2008.
Last updated: 1 September 2008.