Resources for Training Your Employees to Adopt Green Strategies

These days more and more companies have incentives to make the shift to eco-friendly technology. Among the many factors encouraging businesses to go green are tax and power incentives, reducing carbon dioxide emissions and improving corporate image.

It is important that the training department is a fundamental part of green strategies for your business. Developing a green strategy in the workplace requires new ways of thinking and doing things so training is often a good place to start initiating green programs. By encouraging management and employees to become environmentally aware and to get into the green habit needs to take effect at all levels of staffing.

The nature of your organization will obviously play a role in what training opportunities you will provide. Managers will certainly benefit from books, courses and videos on how to implement green strategies among their teams. Online courses are an efficient way of training front-line employees.

Online training materials can be found at:

ICT Environmental Sustainability Group offers a series of online lectures in sustainable IT. The lectures cover all aspects of the subject including drivers and benefits, product services and sustainable practices.

Sustainable IT Webcast covers many of the issues and questions surrounding sustainable IT.

This video from AT&T Tech channel discusses the advantages of green computing.

Going Green online video shows how to green up your company

Aquinas College offers online courses in sustainable business management.

If you want to step away from the computer, Tonex offers a 4 day boot camp to educate IT professionals in how to deliver cost-effective, sustainable information systems and technology, and Green IT technologies.

There are other simple ways you can use to train your employees to go green:

· Hold virtual meetings – this is a great way of training and keeping your staff on the same page no matter where they might be. Virtual meeting cut out traveling expenses and can be enhanced with virtual classrooms for training purposes.

· Make a green impression by ensuring that your workspaces are eco-friendly. Small changes can make a big difference like installing energy-saving light bulbs, use energy saving computers and power management software to cut down on costs, recycle old computers and ink cartridges. Document all your savings so that you can illustrate the benefits of green approaches to senior management.

· Go paperless – Use online training aids and online books to research and reinforce training. Store data files when you can rather than printing our lengthy documents.

· Opt for green service providers – if you are selecting hotels for training purposes, enquire about their environmental programs. Be prepared with questions about sustainability.