I recently took my son fishing. To make the seven-hour drive more tolerable for him, I switched on a pop music station – a station that only played about 10 songs in a continuous loop. One, California Gurls by Katy Perry, got stuck in my brain. It’s an earworm that plays subconsciously in a continuous loop.
More than a week later I still find myself humming it. Not because I like it, but just because it is there.
Fast forward to a peer-to-peer exchange among senior communicators and sustainability advocates I moderated last week in Manhattan.
It was a great discussion with thought leaders from Verizon Communications and Church & Dwight sharing insights about how they are managing to instill a sustainability mindset within their companies.
The spirited discussion among an intimate group over breakfast revolved around shared pain points in regards to building a sustainable enterprise.
The one point that kept coming up was the need and difficulty in getting employees to embrace and implement sustainable practices.
From resistance to double-sided printing to a laissez-faire attitude about computer monitors left on after hours, people around the table were struggling with the challenge of creating a sustainability mindset among employees.
That got me thinking about my earworm. How can we get sustainability to play as a subconscious soundtrack – ever present, requiring no more effort to conjure up than remaining awake?
Certainly, we must explore more what sustainability can do for the employees personally than what they personally can do to save the earth. Simple language is also a must – I think the only polysyllabic words in California Gurls are its namesake state and “bikini.” But maybe most importantly is the idea of a continuous loop of a few selected hits.
Sustainability can’t be just one of several company initiatives that employees are asked to embrace; something that is “launched” and left to take root organically.
It needs to be the number one “song” played on a continuous loop so that it worms its way into the employee subconscious.
(Guest contributor Ron Loch is a senior vice president at Gibbs & Soell Public Relations. He leads the firm’s Greentech & Sustainability Practice, collaborating with G&S colleagues specializing in advanced manufacturing and energy, agribusiness and food, consumer lifestyle and building solutions, professional services, and technology and general science.)