Companies and organizations are recognizing more than ever that great talent is becoming more and more difficult to attain in a constantly-growing economic climate. There is now a growing trend to attract candidates prior to college graduation. A recent survey by Decima Research found that only 16% of professionals under age 30 deem salary a priority. The 'money can't buy you happiness' adage holds particularly true for the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered (GLBT) communities. With no legal protection in most U.S. states, GLBT individuals have historically gone underrepresented or into hiding at the work place.

Although there has been much progress over past decades for GLBT rights, there is still a long way to go.

Fact: In 36 states, it is legal to fire someone based on his or her sexual orientation.
Fact: In 46 states, it is legal to fire someone based on his or her gender identity.

While many companies have very specific clauses, most do not include protection against sexual preference and gender identity discrimination in their sexual harassment policies. Even fewer extend benefit rights to domestic partners of their employees.

Organic sees the value of how variety in the workplace can translate into more variety in talent, greater ideas, and ultimately better overall creative. To this end, several Organic employees from San Francisco, Toronto and New York traveled to Washington, D.C. for this year's 'Out For Work' conference. This youth-based, GLBT-supported conference and employment fair gave Organic the opportunity to show support for this community.

Mark Kingdon spoke to an attentive audience on the importance of working for an organization that supports diversity; how one can truly flourish, be happier, and ultimately be a stronger employee if he or she is within an environment that welcomes and embraces those from all backgrounds. He also spoke personally of his own workplace experiences, and how important it is not to allow others (or even yourself) to impose limits on you.

During the employment fair, which included envoys from large companies like Target, Ernst & Young, Boeing, and Merk, Organic's human resources representative Paulette James Anderson, and Group Director, David Albright, spoke to GLBT youth with respect and encouragement about opportunities at Organic.

As an 'out' lesbian working at Organic, even I found the experience to be eye-opening. I learned new things (like where transgendered individuals can buy business-appropriate work wear), and also gained an even stronger sense of pride in Organic for taking this  'visible' leap forward. Organic's participation at this conference has introduced us to another highly-talented pool, all the while publicly showing that Organic practices what it preaches by actively seeking and embracing diversity - and that our company excels partly because of our values and inclusion.

Clare

As you all have seen with the previous emails regarding making Organic a Green office; below is an update on where Detroit stands in this process.

• Switched all of our cleaning products to organic, biodegradable products (Method/Seventh Generation).
• Switched from Styrofoam to all paper products: all bio-degradable or recycled when possible.
• Switched to recycled paper.
• Recycling ink cartridges and batteries.
• Working with an organization (Youth Environmental Recycle) to recycle all empty cans and bottles.
• Brought in more recycling containers throughout the office for both confidential shredding and recycling.
• Much of the office lights have been switched to energy efficient light bulbs (working with building management to change the rest).
• Switched fruit to all organic and/or locally grown when in season and available.
• Junk mail stopped/recycled:  attached you will find a flyer on how to stop receiving junk mail at the office and your home. (I’ve actually done this in the past and love not receiving all the extra mail each day!).
• All garbage and waste that goes in our dumpsters are 100% recycled.  That includes paper, plastic, etc.

We are currently still working on:

• Establishing recycling bins for paper at every workstation (to be emptied nightly by cleaning staff).
• Installing timers on all the lights (some of our conference rooms/office have this already…we are working with building management to have the rest changed over).
• Recycling all old computers/electronics.
• Switching all cutlery to recycled/bio-degradable material.
• Installing a bike rack for those interested in riding a bike to work.

Here’s what you can do:

• Please turn OFF lights when conference rooms and offices are not in use.
• Turn off desk lamps when leaving for the evening.
• Print/copy two sided when possible.
• Print only what is needed and remember to pick up your printed material (the amount of unclaimed paper tossed each day is huge!).
• Turn off computer monitors when finished for the day (make sure to leave your computer running as IT runs updates and the network performs back ups at night…only turn the monitor off!).
• Use washable items for coffee, drinks and meals…..glasses, mugs, silverware, etc.  (Our office does have a dishwasher on site, as well as, dish soap for cleaning your items….please remember to clean your items and not to leave them in the sinks!).

Through our research to become a more ECO-Friendly office we have found that our garbage/waste service (Capital Waste, Inc) recycles everything that leaves this office.   (http://www.capitalwasteusa.com/)

Capital Waste is a local company who hand sorts all the materials in the dumpster, recycles what they can and sends the rest to the Greater Detroit Resource Recovery Authority for incineration. 

The steam generated produces electricity and is sold to Detroit Edison.  This process completes the recycling chain and ensures that 100% of Organic Detroit’s garbage/waste is recycled.

Toni

Recently, a new LCD screen was added in the lobby of the Detroit office to greet guests and ORG DET team members.  At first, the screen displayed a simple static image slideshow of our recent work.  That was not enough.  Members of the strategy and engineering team developed an application that displayed images of a recent team outing to a Tigers game.  In its current state, James split the screen and wrote and application to:

Populate the bottom half of the screen using images pulled from an Organic flickr account
Populate the top half of the screen to pull Twitter messages from anyone who adds “organic_inc” as a friend and sends a reply.

So give it a whirl and tell DET what you are doing.  Again, just open a Twitter account, add “organic_inc” as a friend and send a reply like this:  “@organic_inc messin’ around with the Detroit Office”.

Have fun with it.  I for one can’t walk by without reading some of the recent posts.

Thanks James!

Michael