A Huge Thank You to Our Guest Blogger, Environmental Educator – Richard Boothman.

Introduction

Richard Boothman is a locally based environmental educator who wants to make sure everyone has access to information to help them understand the scale of the environmental challenges we face and the solutions available to us.

Richard has developed environmental management courses for business and has delivered these and other courses to many delegates over the last 10 years.  In addition, he has just come to the end of a 20-year career as an Associate Lecturer with The Open University in the UK where he taught a range of environmental courses to undergraduates and post-graduate students.  He is an examiner for environmental certificate and diploma courses in subjects including environmental practice and management.

Through his company, Foggy Outline Limited, Richard provides opportunities for on-line learners to find out more about environmental issues and solutions with several courses available on Udemy.  If you’re interested in finding out more about the available courses, have a look here:

https://foggyoutline.com/environmental-courses

We’re Foggy Outline.  We develop and deliver online learning focusing on environmental issues and the crises we face.  Our courses help you get better informed about these crises – and provide some inspiration about what to do.

Sound good?

Find us at https://foggyoutline.com/environmental-courses

The Environment is a Health and Safety Issue

In business, we tend to compartmentalise things, pushing our employees to become specialists.  But in the real world, things don’t pack neatly into compartments or departments or speciality areas of work.

So, you’re identified as a health and safety specialist, or you’re involved in HR or you’re a production engineer.  And you focus on these areas to the exclusion of everything else.

I consider myself to be an environmental specialist.  I write courses on climate breakdown and sustainability and renewable energy.  But I do this for people in business.  And I’m not just writing the courses for other environmental specialists.  After all, many of them will know much more about the impact of climate breakdown on their business, how their business can be more sustainable and whether they can make better use of renewable energy.

I write courses for business owners and managers who need to see the whole picture.  They need to understand how the world will impact their business and, in turn, how their business will impact the world.

Let’s focus for a few minutes on the impact the world has on business.

We’re experiencing unprecedented levels of environmental harm.  You’re having to deal with a changing climate and more extreme weather events.  You’re having to deal with increasing levels of pollution.  This is affecting your business, your family’s health and the health of your workers and their families.

For example, I read a report recently about the presence of microplastics in blood clots from patients who had suffered thromboses or strokes.  Microplastics are tiny fragments of plastic that are shed by our synthetic clothing or that result from the break down, over time, of larger plastic items such as bags and bottles.  Microplastics are present in the air we breathe and the water we drink.  They’re in our bloodstream and in our internal organs.  We have no idea of the long-term effect on our health.

In addition to direct health effects, we’re also experiencing increasing levels of anxiety.  Some of this anxiety arises from fears about the environmental harm we’re causing, so called eco-anxiety.  And whether you accept this to be real or not, you can be sure that some of your employees accept it and are experiencing it – particularly the younger ones who’ll have to deal with the long-term consequences.

So, the harm we’re doing to the environment is also harming us and the people who work for us.  We can no longer compartmentalise environmental issues and make them the sole responsibility of the company’s environmental specialists.  They’re everyone’s responsibility and they’re increasingly becoming an issue for your Health & Safety department.

And as a business owner or manager, you need to keep abreast of all these issues and make sure they’re not compartmentalised or made the sole responsibility of departmental specialists. Imagine the following…

Uncomfortable questions for an interviewer.

“What is your company doing to minimise the environmental harm you’re causing?”

Imagine you’re interviewing someone for a new role in your business and you think you’ve found the right person.  You’ve been through all the usual formalities.  You’ve asked questions about their motivation and encouraged them to explain how they would handle some specific role-related challenges.  You’re just winding up by asking if they have any questions for you.  And this is the question they ask!

How do you react?

• This is only a small business. We don’t have any significant impact on the environment.
• We don’t manufacture anything, so we don’t use raw materials.
• We’re only a service business so we don’t harm the environment.
• I’ve got a business to run, I don’t have time to think about the environment.

Or something similar?

How do you think this would go down with your interviewee?  Remember, this is your favoured candidate.  She ticks all the boxes in terms of experience, and she has all the attributes you’re looking for?  Do you think she’d be convinced by your answers?

Or can you say something like,

• We know the potential harm we’re causing and we’re doing our best to minimise it. We’re only just at the start of the process but we’ve cut down the number of business journeys we make.  We’re careful about what we buy for the business and when we do need things we aim to get them from sustainable sources.  We pay a good salary to employees, and we also offer opportunities to get involved in community projects.  We offer a cycle to work scheme and encourage car sharing.  It’s not perfect and we very much like to involve our people in our efforts.  If you have any ideas how we can improve, we’d be delighted to hear them.

Which response would encourage your interviewee to accept an offer from you?

Research has found that people looking for a new role are more likely to accept a job with an organisation that demonstrates some care for the environment.  This is particularly the case with people aged up to 40 – which is probably the age group you’re trying to attract to your business.

If you want to recruit and retain a committed and engaged workforce, making a strong commitment to minimising the environmental harm your business causes is a good place to begin.

Education on Environmental issues is key.

We’re Foggy Outline.  We develop and deliver online learning focusing on environmental issues and the crises we face.  Our courses help you get better informed about these crises – and provide some inspiration about what to do.

Sound good?

Find us at https://foggyoutline.com/environmental-courses

Thank you.