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Environmental efforts may yield crop of future corporate leaders
By Tim Wilson, Editor & Writer, Boston College Center
Going green continues to rise as a goal of companies looking to address environmental issues in a genuine way that improves their reputations with the public and consumers. Recent reports in USA Today provide evidence of an additional benefit of environmental initiatives – they can make the grass look greener to today’s top college graduates who are demonstrating in their college choices that sustainability counts.
USA Today reported that universities and colleges are putting on the green to attract students who are serious about environmental issues. Mark Orlowski, founder and executive director of the Massachusetts-based Sustainable Endowments Institute, told the newspaper that the trend is growing at schools large and small “as a way of attracting the best students possible.” According to the Institute’s 2010 College Sustainability Report Card, 69 percent of colleges and universities were incorporating a sustainability message during the admissions and student orientation processes.
A separate USA Today story notes that two-thirds of students surveyed for the Princeton Review’s recent College Hopes and Worries report said a college’s “environmental commitment” would be a factor in where they applied.
Fast forward four years and an effective message about environmental commitment could work for companies looking to attract top young graduates as employees.
The value of corporate citizenship efforts in finding and keeping top-notch employees is becoming clear to a growing number of companies. The Boston College Center’s upcoming Profile of the Practice report will include survey results showing that 59.1 percent of respondents cite employee retention and recruitment as one of their companies’ top three explicit business-related goals of their corporate citizenship strategy.
And it would seem the majority of companies can just stay the course with their corporate citizenship approach in order to capitalize on the drawing power of green. The 2010 Profile of the Practice echoes other surveys in identifying environmental sustainability as a top focus of companies’ corporate citizenship agendas. Based on responses to the Profile of the Practice survey, environmental impact/sustainability is covered in the strategies of 73.5 percent of companies that have a strategy. In addition, protecting the environment is rated as one of the top three social/environmental goals of corporate citizenship strategies.
Beyond providing an obvious benefit to Mother Earth, companies that operate with the environment in mind may be able to reap business benefits when it comes time to harvest the next crop of corporate leaders.
Look for release of the full 2010 Profile of the Practice report this fall.
