PLEASE ANSWER 1 & 5 FIRST. Thank You :)

A few years ago, Burts Bees, a maker of natural personal-care products, found to its dismay that it was generating 40 tons of waste every month. Two years later, the company had reduced that amount to 10 tons through a rigorous program of recycling and compositing. It was a start, but at that point, reported John Replogle (CEO at the time), we were stuck and needed to reinvigorate the effort again. The companys green teama group of volunteer employees who oversee efforts to improve the workplace environmentcame up with an employee-oriented trash-appreciation exercise. They stockpiled two weeks worth of company garbage and dumped it in the parking lot. More than 300 employees then donned hazmat suits and waded through the refuse heap to find everything that should have been recycled and everything that could be recycled if there were someplace to send it.

As a result, Burts was able to cut waste in half and save $25,000 a year in hauling expenses. We found money in the dumpster, said Replogle. Weve turned our waste stream from a cost center into a profit center. More importantly, added Replogle, seeing all that trash in the parking lot translated into a collective aha moment, and we all realized we could do a better job at recycling. In the wake of the dumpster-diving exercise, employee-recycling compliance jumped from 80 percent to 98 percent. Now, reported Replogle, we have a shared ethos of taking responsibility.

Burts isnt the only company thats turned dumpster diving into business as usual. Bentley Prince Street, a commercial carpet maker, has been plumbing its garbage on a monthly basis for more than 15 years. Department-based teams of 20 employees sift through the trash for about 15 minutes looking for recyclable or reusable items. So far, the company has not only saved $50,000 a year in waste hauling but also earns about $150,000 annually from the sales of recyclables to companies that have commercial uses for them.

The monetary savings, said sustainability director Judy Pike, are an important aspect of our program, but equally important is . . . educating our employees about recycling and sustainability. Bentley Prince Street coordinates its employee sustainability efforts through its QUEST initiative (for Quality Utilizing Employee Suggestions and Teamwork), a program through which employee teams determine ways of eliminating waste. QUEST has reduced the firms water intake by 52 percent, its energy use by 40 percent, its greenhouse emissions by 48 percent, and its waste sent to landfill by 97 percent.

The sustainability success of companies like Burts Bees and Bentley Prince Street isnt entirely surprising to L. Hunter Lovins, president of Natural Capital Solutions, a nonprofit specializing in innovations in environmental practices and economic sustainability. Lets track the logic, she suggests: Taking care of your workforce, particularly by engaging them in implementing a corporate commitment to sustainability, will drive greater productivity and thus greater profitability.

Lovinss logic tracks as follows. She starts from the premise that satisfied employees are more productive employees, citing studies reporting that unsatisfied workers currently cost the U.S. economy $300 billion per year. Lovins then proceeds to argue that the most satisfied employees are those who are given the opportunity to make progress in meaningful work. What constitutes meaningful work? For that matter, what constitutes progress? Lovins suggests that a good measure of both is the extent to which employees put forth discretionary effortthe level above minimum requirements that people could put forth if they wanted to. People who believe their jobs are meaningful, says Lovins, channel their discretionary effort into their work, such as volunteering to dive into dumpsters or serve on waste-elimination teams.

Lovins also believes that work that involves employees in companywide sustainability efforts is meaningful to a lot of Americans. The American workforce, she contends, no longer views work solely as a means to a paycheck. To many people, especially the younger generation, their job is an integral part of their lifestyle. . . . Ninety-two percent of Millennials say that they want to work for a socially responsible company. . . . [One] study . . . found that 96 percent of Generation Y respondents are highly concerned about the environment and expect that employers will take steps towards becoming more sustainable.

A recent Gallup survey reported that highly engaged organizations returned 3.9 times the earnings-per-share growth rate of companies that rated low on engagement. A similar survey by Hewitt and Associates, a global human resources consulting firm, found that companies with high levels of employee engagement boasted shareholder return 19 percent above average, while those with lower levels were 44 percent below average. The same study identified social and environmental responsibility as a key factor in driving employee engagement.

How do companies foster employee engagement, particularly when it comes to sustainability programs? First, it helps to be genuinely committed to sustainability. A study of employees in the food-processing industry found that employees level of organizational commitment is influenced by their perception of their firms environmental sustainability. More specifically, says Suzanne Tilleman of the University of Montana, engagement is higher when a company turns out a high percentage of organic products and exhibits a collectivistic identity orientationthat is, emphasizes companywide contributions to a greater good.

Second, organizational commitment is greater when a company fosters a combination of top-down leadership and bottom-up empowerment in its sustainability practices. At Burts Bees, for example, if a department fails to pass certain tests for proper recycling, chronic abusers must go through remedial training. At the same time, the company depends on frontline employees for such ideas as cleaning industrial containers with steam rather than wateran insight that cut water usage for the task by 90 percent. In return, in addition to bonuses tied to companywide sustainability performance, employees receive such Eco-benefits as cash compensation for biking or carpooling to work and buying high-efficiency or hybrid vehicles. Then, of course, there are those paid days for volunteering for activities like dumpster diving. Such activities, says Harvards Bobbi Thomason, are smart initiatives for showing your people that sustainability is truly important to the organizations central mission. Besides, adds sustainability consultant Shira E. Norman, once youve seen your garbage up close, its hard to ignore it.

1.ntro

2.What about you? Millennials and Generation Y refer to the same thinggenerally speaking, people born between the early 1980s and early 2000s. Does this range of birth years include you? Whether it does or doesnt, how would you characterize your personal attitude toward sustainability, especially in the workplace? How does your attitude toward sustainability reflect your attitudes toward such matters as the countrys economic future and your own?

I was born in 2000

3. Hunter Lovins defines employee engagement as the goal of creating supportive, collaborative, and rewarding work environments. Compare her understanding of employee engagement with the principle of organizational commitment as its characterized in the text. In what sense is developing employee engagement intended to go a step beyond fostering organizational commitment in workplace attitudes?

Lovins also talks about employee integration, by which she means a companys goal of integrating its sustainability strategies into employee job descriptions and employees everyday jobs. In your opinion, what sort of policies and practices would be important in achieving employee integration over and above employee engagement?

4. Answered

5. Some experts report that employee engagement has become the new Holy Grail for many organizations or that it has long been the Holy Grail for creating thriving and successful organizations. Robert A. Cooke, however, believes that achieving and optimizing employee engagement is more complicated than it may seem. Cooke, whos CEO of Human Synergistics International, a consultancy specializing in organizational culture and leadership and group and individual behavior, charges that the human capital consulting industry continues to sell the idea that a few sips from the Holy Grail of employee engagement will magically transform organizations and heal whatever ails them. While this is a good start, companies should go beyond this and get to the root of their organizational ills by using a true organizational culture survey to define, activate, and reinforce the behaviors that drive the right kind of engagement and optimize organizational performance. Review our discussion of organization culture in Chapter 2. Discuss the pros and cons of Cookes statement that truly understanding how to optimize performance in your organization requires understanding your culture.

6. conclusion (+ how will this help you in your future career)