Employees get the message on environmental awareness

Article Type: Notes and news From: Industrial and Commercial Training, Volume 43, Issue 2

All 7,000 UK employees at financial-services company Legal & General follow an e-learning course on environmental awareness as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility strategy.

The course is designed to explain core environmental messages and challenge behavior in the workplace with regard to reducing waste, saving energy and traveling smart. It includes a video clip from Dax Lovegrove, head of business and industry at the World Wildlife Fund, supporting the cause for more environmental awareness.

The response from Legal & General staff has been positive. With more than 92 percent of employees having completed the course, it has generated more than 100 ideas and suggestions to help the company to reduce its environmental impact.

Ideas have come from all corners of the business. They include, for example,improving software applications that waste huge amounts of paper and promoting car-sharing initiatives.

Paul Mills, senior operations manager at Legal & General, said:

I am delighted with the module and proud to be associated with it. The course has prompted a number of suggestions from employees and the feedback that I have received has been excellent. The package was pitched at the right level and is helping us with our energy, travel and waste targets. The beauty of the program has been to get staff to think about their wasteful habits and to raise general inefficiencies and ideas through our group mailbox. One of the main achievements has been the awareness of the program.

Andrea Miles, managing director at Edvantage UK, which helped to develop the course, said:

Corporate social responsibility is an important consideration for all organizations and it has been great to work with a company that wants to make a demonstrable difference in this area. As employees, we have a role to play at work and beyond in protecting the environment. This course helps employees to understand some of the simple things that can be done. Scale that up to an organization as large as Legal & General and the impact is vast.