Site Green Teams

Forming Site Green Teams or harnessing the enthusiasm of individuals is an effective way to implement sustainability strategies that require input, coordination, and dedication from stakeholders with a broad range of expertise and backgrounds. Sustainable operations require team efforts by committed groups of informed and engaged internal staff with holistic visions and concrete goals, who identify and implement appropriate projects, practices, and policies. An effective, inclusive approach helps ensure that everyone is working toward the same goals, and allows personnel across multiple offices to share the responsibilities.

Following is a list of suggested steps that locations can take to form successful Green Teams. Consult the Green Team Toolkit for additional resources.

1. Gain upper management endorsement and support. 

One of the key steps for success is to ensure that a Green Team is organized and empowered to lead. As volunteer team members may be operating outside of their professional roles and responsibilities, obtaining upper management’s endorsement and support is especially important for successful Green Teams. Teams who receive endorsement and support gain authority that they otherwise may not have: to meet, to establish team goals, to gather and disseminate information, and to make recommendations about implementation of policies and practices.

2. Identify leaders. 

A Site Green Team’s success depends in large part upon the credibility and effectiveness of its leadership and the degree to which leaders can engender support for the team’s initiatives.

• • Leadership responsibilities may include the following:
    • • Organizing, convening, and leading regular team meetings
      • Encouraging subject matter experts, representatives, and partners to remain engaged as they balance demands of their official work responsibilities
      • Building and leveraging relationships with key stakeholders throughout location and with other Department and external entities in order to build momentum
      • Leading location Green Team’s interactions with staff, team members, and management; coordinating with [site management]; and raising awareness.
      • Managing and measuring overall progress and results of Green Team initiatives and reporting successes and challenges to leadership.

3. Identify other team members and partners.

The results of Site Green Teams also depend upon the enthusiasm and knowledge of their members, as well as the breadth and depth of their reach. Ideally, Green Team members represent as wide a variety of sections and roles as possible, and bring expertise in subject matter related to one or more of the impact areas in the Guide. It is important that members bring enthusiasm, that they understand the necessity of the team’s success, and that they are willing to dedicate time and effort to performing their roles and to producing results.

Just as with the team leadership, Green Team members typically embody a personal commitment to sustainability values and a willingness to model this personal commitment through their daily behavior.

• A member’s responsibilities may include the following:
  • Making and keeping commitments to fellow location Green Team members to model sustainability by consistently demonstrating sustainable actions
  • Sharing ideas for strategies to meet Green Team goals
  • Identifying achievements, opportunities, and challenges within team member’s own sections or offices, and sharing this information with the Green Team
  • Implementing strategies specifically related to their subject matter expertise in support of federal performance goals

4. Form the team.

Once Green Team leadership, team members, and partners have been identified, the team can meet to establish their group norms and roles. These may include:

• Establishing a team purpose by defining the Green Team’s primary goal, mission statement, and guiding principles; and ensuring that the mission statement is location-specific and well aligned with the BMS location country’s challenges and opportunities.
• Defining the team structures by identifying specific team member roles and responsibilities.
• Establishing the team process by defining meeting times, meeting agenda standards, creating standards for communicating with other group members between meetings, and setting standards for the creation and distribution of meeting minutes

5. Continue building the team.

In addition to holding regularly scheduled meetings, Green Teams can benefit from conducting wider annual meetings to invigorate their visions, revisit their mission statements, reestablish team goals for the upcoming year, and revisit existing strategies. These meetings should be open to broader groups of interested staff to educate, build awareness, and engage staff. During these meetings, it may be determined that some goals and strategies should be replaced, while others—such as ongoing energy efficiency training during orientation—should remain indefinitely.