Sustainability is a hot topic in the business world. Today’s climate-conscious consumers are more likely to support brands that protect the environment and will pivot away from businesses that cause harm to the ecosystem.
Similarly, talented employees are attracted to more sustainable workplaces. Employees say they would take a 19% pay cut to work for a more environmentally friendly firm.
Running a climate-conscious, eco-friendly company can help your business stay ahead of lawsuits and regulations, too. This is crucial, as your firm can face hefty fines if it fails to meet sustainability compliance guidelines.
Environmental Regulations
Understanding the legal obligations your firm has to employees and the environment is crucial. Without a clear understanding of state and federal law, you cannot expect to stay on the right side of compliance guidelines. The threat of fines and litigation reinforces the critical role that HR plays in securing sustainability at a business. At a minimum, you should be familiar with basic sustainability regulations like:
- Energy Usage: US-based businesses will be impacted by key pieces of legislation like the Paris Agreement and the President’s Climate Plan. This means that getting ahead of Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines is important to measure, track, and reduce emissions.
- Waste: Waste is highly regulated and, if mismanaged, will incur hefty fines. This means that your business needs to have a waste management program that aligns with state regulations.
- Environmental Protection: Your firm should not cause undue harm to the local ecosystem. If it does, it may fall foul of federal laws like the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, or the National Environmental Policy Act.
Staying ahead of federal and state environmental laws is key to the long-term success of your business, and failing to comply can result in heavy fines and serious damage to your brand reputation.
Ensuring Compliance
Taking your commitment to environmental protection can prevent fines and help your firm grow. However, most employees aren’t familiar with environmental protection laws. This is a serious issue, as accidental breaches of environmental obligations in the workplace will still land your business in hot legal water. You can ensure environmental compliance at your firm by:
- Risk Assessing: An environmental risk assessment (ERA) helps your business better understand its impact on the natural world. This can help you prevent ecological damage and reduce energy waste.
- Compliance Training: You can’t expect employees to innately understand environmental protection laws. Instead, craft bespoke compliance training workshops to highlight potential breaches and assess your team’s understanding of the law.
- Applicable Regulations: Staying up to date with current laws and legislation is crucial. This will help you pivot when new laws are proposed and will protect you when climate change regulations come into effect.
At their core, these changes are designed to raise awareness of environmental protection laws and compliance guidelines. Even short training sessions can help decision-makers better understand how to stay within the law and achieve their environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. These awareness-raising strategies can empower employees to take proactive steps to improve sustainability in the workplace by minimizing waste and energy misuse.
Goals and Reporting
Setting sustainability goals is a great way to get ahead of compliance regulations and achieve ESG goals. However, before your firm can call itself environmentally friendly, you’ll need to start recording environmental data and get to grips with ESG reporting frameworks.
ESG frameworks help you communicate the importance of legal obligations and compliance guidelines to a range of stakeholders. They help quantify your emissions and make it easier to measure your progress. You can get your ESG framework started by getting in touch with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI). The GRI is an independent organization that helps track your impact and can certify you as environmentally friendly.
Setting independent sustainability goals can help future-proof your organization, too. Modern sustainability tools can reduce waste and emissions and help institute a social responsibility policy at your place of work. Sustainability tools like warehouse management apps integrate neatly into your existing tech stack, too, meaning you can:
- Recycle and repurpose existing inventory;
- Monitor sustainable markets;
- Leverage analytic insights to encourage a culture of innovation at work.
These changes can be transformative if you’re used to reacting to compliance breaches. Integrated tech-like warehouse management tools empower your employees to make more environmentally conscious decisions and help you go above and beyond compliance guidelines. This can also help you dodge greenwashing lawsuits and false advertising claims based on ESG misrepresentation.
Conclusion
Creating a sustainable work environment should be a top priority for business leaders around the country. Start by working with independent organizations like the GRI to create compliance training programs and ESG reporting frameworks that are relevant to your workplace and empower employees to make better decisions. Getting ahead of compliance guidelines and legal obligations is good for your firm’s brand image, too, as more consumers show a strong preference for sustainable businesses today.
