Sizzle your sustainability by engaging with your employees

Face it: we all know how to ignore our bosses - just like we knew how to ignore our parents. But most companies have developed communication strategies that try to control communications and are still in the 'tell them' attitude. At Justmeans' Social Networking Conference, Tim Johns from Unilever is talking about the need to change that 'tell them' attitude within the organisation as well as between organisations and the external world. This is Part III of my series on one of the most exciting conferences about how to engage stakeholders with social media - and develop with a quickly developing world.

Tim Johns says that current engagement with employees is at an all time low - a result of a lack of trust and inappropriate IT. What he's done is having internal platforms including 'my site zones' which work like internal fbs, giving them the ability to self-find the people they want. This is flattening the hierarchy of the organisations. Giving the information back to the people, and helping them to use it. There's often some 'senior management nervousness' in this process. Senior management too often thinks that they can control what's happening. He emphasises the importance to think that internal communication is the same as external communication. Sure - sounds great, but I don't think most companies are there yet!

Ed Gillspie from Futerra is talking about 'Sizzling Sustainability'. They want to make sustainable development so desirable it becomes normal. His bold, humerous, 'cool', mildly off-the cuff manner (added to by his short sleeved t-shirt in a room filled with suits speaks volumes of his self-confidence in this area); and the reality of where we are moving. He's encouraging shifting to a 'trust and verify' movement with one's employees rather than command and control - with everyone from Greenpeace to Tesco. (That experience explains the confidence.)

How to make sustainability tangible for your employees? Make it worth talking about. Sexy. Remarkable. We trust our peers - 'people like us'. It's all about employee engagement inside the company. They've worked with making McDonalds more green and more engaged. In their work with Unilever, they've worked to make the online spaces user-friendly - especially since Unilever is such a multi-national space. With L'Oreal, they worked with internal ethics, turning it from a published guide to turning the guide into a document that has real credibility.

They say its about 'selling the sizzle of sustainability'. But to sell 'sizzle' isn't about making something up - its about making it real. To make it real, its not just about the superficial greenwashing, or telling stories to dress up an unsustainable product. Your employees - and their friends who are influencing them - won't trust you - and won't engage - if the substance isn't there. So communication can become a way of helping the development of the core business. And that's what makes 'ethical communication' possible.