TriNet’s corporate environmental responsibility series is designed to provide ideas around having an environmentally mindful workplace. You’ll see avenues the characters can take in the conversation below. These are just a few potential paths we believe to be helpful and are not meant to be considered as the only possible outcomes. Feel free to navigate to a different path at the bottom of the page.

The main things you need to know are:

Roberto pinged Andrea “Morning, do you have a sec to chat?” Andrea gave him a (thumbs up) and a few moments later she had an incoming call. After a few pleasantries were exchanged, Roberto asked, “Remember how we’re interviewing people for that new role? I interviewed a handful of people and I just got off video with one candidate, Sam, who I think would be a perfect fit. They currently have one offer and it sounds like they may be getting another one this week. Sam asked me about our position on corporate social responsibility and I could speak on our DEI stance and initiatives, which they seemed pleased with—but then they followed up by asking specifically about our position on CER or corporate environmental responsibility. I checked Sam’s resume and they put hiking and upcycling under their interests, so the environment seems to be really important to them. I haven’t responded yet because I wasn’t comfortable talking about CER off the cuff, but I promised to get back to Sam by EOD tomorrow since they may have two other offers by then! I don’t know who the other offers are from, but hopefully we have a better stance on CER than they do!”

Andrea replied, “I hope so too since you seem really excited about this candidate, but I think all we can do is focus on ourselves. Did you already tell them about the compensation package and our benefits?”

“Sure did,” Roberto continued, “but even after that they asked more questions about CER.”

Andrea pondered, “What do you know about CER? I don’t know much. Maybe I scanned an article or two about it in the past.”

Roberto explained, “Same, same. I poked around the internet a bit before I called you. I think that a lot of companies, including ours, have practices that are not inconsistent with CER. It’s just that we don’t have formalized policies, which especially makes sense for us because we are small but growing.”

“Well, that’s something right?” Andrea responded. “How about this—lets block out some time this afternoon to do some research about corporate environmental responsibility like the history of it, what other companies are doing, whatever we can get our hands on quickly. Then we can figure out to what extent we are already do things consistent with CER when we reconvene. Let’s say 4-ish?”

Roberto agreed and added, “I get the sense from Sam that even if we didn’t have initiatives yet, they would be interested in what we’re working on or considering and ways that they could be involved or even take a leadership role. We can keep a list of things that seem doable so I can have a meaningful conversation about CER with Sam and what their involvement could look like. Hopefully, then they will be able to envision themselves working here with us. Ideally, I could have this conversation with Sam and give them their offer at the same time and maybe it could help recruit them. Before Andrea could respond, she received an invite from Roberto to discuss further at 4.

What should Andrea and Roberto do next?