Employee Engagement Research

Our tagline at Winning Workplaces is "better for people, better for business." Lately we've taken to tacking on "better for society" to this, reflecting the focus of some of the double and even triple bottom line businesses we've honored over the years for their demonstration of the payoff of employee engagement practices.

A new blog post by small business new marketing guru Chris Brogan re-reminded me of this focus, in a small but powerful way. In outlining his expectations for himself and his readers he might meet at the 2010 South By Southwest festival that starts tomorrow, Brogan made his case for limiting the distribution of business cards:

Unless you want to do business with me, don’t give me a business card. We both know how to reach each other, so unless one of us asks for one, let’s not hand them out. ...

Save a card. Save the planet. Rewire the way humans do business.

I think this is a great tip for individuals, and applied en masse it has the potential to help all three stakeholders I mentioned above:

Employees – less materials to worry about in sales presentations, networking events, etc. (As an aside, you can use technology – smart phones, laptops, PDAs – to store a contact's info if you really want it and are sans biz cards.)
Businesses – printing fewer cards because employees hand out less of them can slim down your marketing budget. On a larger scale, more money to play with can spur more effective strategy work to meet customer demands, which can mean more (wait for it) jobs!
Society – fewer demands on printers means more trees! And that's good for everyone because they absorb more of the CO2 caused by global warming and produce more oxygen.

My question for you: How do you engage employees to innovate how you communicate with customers and other stakeholders to cut costs while still achieving your goals?

Photo credit: ChrisBrogan.com