Chickens, Eggs and Green Business
Another day, another study that shows that green businesses have more productive/happier employees, this time from UCLA:
“Adopting green practices isn’t just good for the environment, it’s good for your employees and it’s good for your bottom line. Employees in such green firms are more motivated, receive more training, and benefit from better interpersonal relationships. The employees at green companies are therefore more productive than employees in more conventional firms.”
This adds to wealth of research that shows greener businesses have better staff retention rates, give shareholders better returns, do better in a recession etc, etc. A green business is a better business.
But this always gets me thinking – what’s the cause and what’s the effect? Does being green deliver these results, or is it that the kind of progressive, values-led business that does well will be more likely to take environmental issues seriously? It is almost impossible to isolate the two factors in these studies.
I have come to the conclusion that, rather than one “coming first” as in old chicken and egg cliché, the two are part of a virtuous circle – a better business is likely to take green seriously which delivers business benefits which make the business even better and even more convinced of the need to be values led which in turn makes them more committed to environmental improvements. Which “came first” is often lost in the mists of time.
It’s actually to solve the old ‘chicken and egg’ conundrum itself – any student of evolution will tell you the egg came first.