The “People” Side of “People, Planet, Profit”

Sustainability is often defined as businesses and other activities that take into account people, planet, and profit. “Planet” clearly refers to environmental impacts, and “profit” means making money and being financially sustainable. But the “people” side is less well defined.

One of SJF Advisory Services’ goals is to help provide this definition.

We are about to release a major report, Employees Matter: Maximizing Company Value Through Workforce Engagement, in which we profile 24 companies that can directly correlate their high road human resources practices and broadly shared employee ownership with increased business performance and ability to weather economic downturns.

I will give a keynote the morning of September 15 highlighting some of the great companies profiled in the Employees Matter report, as well as overall report findings.  I will also talk about the Green Jobs Awards program recently launched by SJF Advisory Services and Green For All, including some early findings from the applicants (awards to be announced at a November awards event). www.greenjobsaward.org

Immediately following my keynote, executives from three of the companies profiled in the Employees Matter Report (Maria Kingery of Southern Energy Management, Stephen Irvin of Namaste Solar, and David Murphy of Better World Books) will participate in a plenary session moderated by noted social entrepreneurship professor Cathy Clark, with the aim of settling once and for all the question of whether treating employees well is merely a nicety or a necessity for a healthy business.  Don’t miss this exciting session – register now at www.sjfsummit.org.

-- Anne Claire Broughton, SJF Advisory Services