Communicating with employees in Retail and Wholesale organisations

Internal communication is an important part of making recycling a success in your workplace. If you completed a waste action plan in Step 2, you’ll find this a useful starting point when it comes to communicating your recycling plans with staff.

It will help you to begin by being clear about:

• Why your organisation needs to recycle – go back to Step 1 for all the great reasons why your organisation needs to recycle, including the legislation requiring it.

• Who manages waste within your organisation? – for example, who empties the bins? Name individual employees, cleaners and facilities staff.

• The location and type of recycling bins and storage facilities – the first section of this step will help with this.

• Which external providers manage the waste and recycling collections – and when and how often do collections take place?

• How should items be presented for recycling? – for example, clean, dry and loose.

Setting your recycling communication aims and objectives

Setting communication aims and objectives will help focus your communications on supporting your wider recycling objectives, as well as enabling you to monitor whether they’ve been achieved. Your objectives could be as follows:

• Raise awareness of recycling opportunities in the workplace

• Inform employees of your recycling and waste policy, your organisation’s legal obligations, and what they need to do as individuals 

• Make it clear how your workplace manages its waste, the benefits of recycling and why you want your employees to recycle

• Educate, inform and motivate employees to recycle – provide instructions and practical support on how to recycle in the workplace and for those working remotely

• Change behaviour – all employees choose to recycle, making recycling the norm 

An example of an aim and objective might be:

Aim: To encourage employees to start or improve recycling in the workplace.

Objective: To raise awareness of what can be recycled across the organisation by installing recycling bins, signage and promotional posters in bin areas by the end of 2024.

Planning who you need to tell

It’s essential to communicate your plans effectively to all your employees, including those working remotely, to help them understand how, why, when and where to recycle. 

Think about the different types of employees – full-time, part-time, temporary or seasonal staff – and the different roles within your organisation: 

• Senior or regional management 

• Store managers 

• Team leaders 

• Front of store employees/Retail Associates 

• Facilities staff/cleaners 

• Recycling service providers 

• Canteen or kitchen staff 

• Office staff 

• Delivery or distribution workers 

• Remote workers 

Assigning a named employee to take responsibility for communicating your recycling plan with staff will help make sure everyone is kept informed and doing their bit. Remember that recycling requirements will differ depending on staff role; for example, facilities staff or cleaners who empty internal recycling bins will need to ensure recyclables are segregated through to external recycling bins, whereas warehouse or stockroom staff may focus on recycling card. 

For larger organisations, you may wish to send recycling messages to team leaders to cascade down to individual employees. For example, senior managers will need to brief managers about enforcing your waste and recycling policy, and managers may then need to liaise with waste service providers and directly with the facilities staff/cleaners responsible for sorting and managing waste for collection. Team leaders will need to ensure their staff members follow the recycling policy and reinforce what can be recycled, how and where. 

Creating effective communications

Using consistent and complementary messaging across different communication touch points across your organisation – from education emails to signage at recycling points – can help encourage people to recycle and change their behaviour.

Using branding to give your recycling communications a consistent look and feel will:

• Provide a recognisable identity for your recycling information

• Make the messages more recognisable and memorable

• Help build credibility and trust

Creating communication touch points across high-traffic areas in the workplace helps people understand what they can and can’t recycle. To help with this, we’ve created a tried and tested ‘Business of Recycling’ identity that you can use to show your organisation’s support and commitment to recycling. This, combined with the existing national Recycle Now logo, helps reinforce recycling messages both at home and work.

Download these FREE communications resources to get started. They’re designed for you to print as they are, or tailor to include your own workplace branding and logo. They include:

• Letterhead/header - to help you promote recycling in the workplace, highlight successes and reinforce the actions you want employees to take

• Email signature – a regular recycling reminder to employees and external audiences

• Instructional posters – in A3, A4 and A5, to show what can and can’t be recycled for each type of waste; these can also double up as bin stickers to ensure materials are collected correctly

Communicating with your customers and visitors

As well as your employees, you may also need to communicate with your customers or visitors. For example, you may have a responsibility to provide take-back schemes for items such as electrical waste or batteries, or you may provide flexible plastic recycling points. The good news is that customer communications aren’t that different from employee messaging, so you can use the principles we’ve already covered on how to engage your employees to make sure your customers and visitors know:

• What they can recycle at your store 

• Where the recycling points are located 

• Which containers they should use – make sure all containers are clearly labelled!

Monitoring the impact of your communications

Once you’ve begun your recycling communications, remember to review them regularly to see how much of an impact they’ve had and spot where there may be room for improvement. Note successes so that you can share them with your team and your service community to encourage them; ​success could be specific actions taken to achieve objectives or consistent, credible presentation of meaningful results. 

Above all, identify activities that worked well and those that didn’t, and share learning from this. Review the findings, and then list your key recommendations for future communications.