Green Cleaning: Need Buy-In? Look To Aristotle

Even if you’re excited about your company’s green-cleaning program, not everyone will be. Building owners might be more concerned about appearance or price; your employees might be wary of change. So, how do you get them to buy in?

As strange as it may seem, you can benefit from the teachings of Aristotle. More than 2,300 years ago, Aristotle said the argument has three parts: the character of the speaker; the emotions of the listener; and the logical argument, or the facts used to convince the audience.

The benefits of green cleaning — the facts — are well documented. In addition to health benefits for people in the building and , there is the value-added benefit of improved productivity. For business discussions, these points work very well.

For everyone else, particularly those who have reservations and concerns about adopting a green-cleaning program, we need what Aristotle called the persuasive argument, which plays to emotions.

Building trust is the first step in making this argument. When building trust, we usually emphasize the factors of honesty and openness, experience and expertise, and dedication and commitment. The science of risk communication tells us all these factors combined amount to 50 percent of the factors people use for determining trust. The other 50 percent comes from empathy and caring. This means your argument could benefit more from emphasizing health benefits over environmental protection with certain audiences. It also means you should select empathetic speakers who can communicate this point effectively.

People’s perceptions control much of the decision-making process. Risk-communication researchers have identified many perceptions which could affect how people accept or reject an idea or program.

For a green-cleaning program, important perceptions for reluctant adopters to hold include: the program has clear benefits for them; it provides them some measure of control; it is fair; and it has options.

A thoughtful plan to encourage the adoption of green cleaning would focus on providing long-term personal health benefits of green cleaning for everyone in the building. After an introduction and promotion campaign, occupants could be surveyed for their support of the program. This would address their perception of control. A follow-up survey six months after adoption would further assess their acceptance of the program.

This approach shifts the focus of adopting a green cleaning program from business and environmental advantages to a focus on benefits for people. It is still perfectly acceptable to emphasize the environmental benefits of green cleaning; however, you may find that is not enough to get the support you need for your program.

Aristotle may be long gone, but his teaching still works for us today. We all benefit from a building of satisfied people.