Recently, CareerBliss noted that while Google remains in its Top 50 Best Companies to Work For, the company is slipping from its high ranking. Google is reported as having trouble holding onto talent, losing people to Facebook and other startups.

Fortunately, two years ago Google implemented Project Oxygen, an effort by in-house statisticians to analyze why people leave Google.

People typically leave a company for one of three reasons, or a combination of them. The first is that they don’t feel a connection to the mission of the company, or sense that their work matters. The second is that they don’t really like or respect their co-workers. The third is they have a terrible boss — and this was the biggest variable.

Google’s Project Oxygen found that what employees valued above all were connected, caring managers. Employee feedback highlighted

• “even-keeled bosses who made time for one-on-one meetings
• “helping people puzzle through problems by asking questions, not dictating answers”
• “took an interest in employees’ lives and careers”
• “making that connection and being accessible”

The head of the Corporate Leadership Council says that “Google is at the leading edge” of companies attempting to apply a data-driven approach to the unpredictable world of human interactions.

When Google realized that managers have a much greater impact on employees’ performance and how they felt about their job than any other factor, they set to work analyzing what makes a great boss. Not just anywhere, but at Google in particular. Project Oxygen began to examine the habits of highly successful managers.

Once Google had its list, the company started teaching it in training programs, as well as in coaching and performance review sessions with individual employees. It paid off quickly: they saw a significant improvement in manager quality for 75 percent of the worst-performing bosses.

Online forums for Google employees commend the company as being a “culture of continuous improvement, at breakneck speed.” Fostering a democratic environment, where all voices carry equal weight, will go far in retaining quality employees over the long haul at Google.

In December of 2011, Seventh Generation announced its partnership with the nation’s first K-5 school with a sustainability theme.

The Sustainability Academy at Lawrence Barnes Elementary School in Burlington, VT is an international model for using sustainability as a lens for education.

Besides providing non-toxic cleaning products for classrooms and teachers, Seventh Generation has participated in a literacy-building program for the school, and helped fund a brand-new alternative energy system designed to reduce the school’s carbon footprint while serving as an educational tool for students.

Plans for 2012 include a science ambassador program in which Seventh Generation employees will work with students to understand the connection between personal and environmental health, along with 880 hours of employee volunteer time to build an outdoor classroom and a natural playground for the school.

A radical new reformulation of Seventh Generation’s laundry liquids received one of the first ever USDA BioPreferred labels in November 2011.

The BioPreferred Seal labeling program is intended to help consumers make purchases that reduce dependence on petroleum, boost rural economies, and alleviate climate change. The certification is awarded to products that are entirely or significantly made from renewable agricultural ingredients and materials.

Following the devastation of tropical storm Irene, Seventh Generation employees volunteered at the Vermont Foodbank to assemble more than 1200 “green” cleaning kits filled with natural and non-toxic clean-up supplies donated by Seventh Generation and other local companies.

As of this year, Chrysalis has two small businesses as venues for providing income and future training for its clients — one that does street cleaning, another that provides temporary staffing. Together, those two entities employ more than 150 people at any given time and generate about $4.5 million a year.

In addition to expanding its services, Chrysalis is also expanding their Downtown Los Angeles office to accommodate their growing numbers of clients and staff. A complete design and renovation plan is in the works that will transform the currently cramped downtown center to over 11,000 square feet of contiguous program and administrative space that will meet the organization’s needs for the next ten years.

One in four MBA students say they’d most want to work at Google, according to a survey published last week by Universum USA.

This is Google’s 5th straight year as the top of the most-wanted-job list. And there was considerable distance between Google and the four companies that trailed it in the top 5.

So what makes these companies’ workplaces so pleasant? It differs from company to company, but the running thread in all of them seems to be that they make the little guy feel as important as the top dog. The three traits shared by the survey’s top 5 companies were

• employee trust in management
• employee pride in the company
• workers feeling camaraderie with other colleagues that they were all striving toward a common goal

How does Google consistently achieve this level employee satisfaction? One way is its company philosophy of not ever telling developers what to work on. This ethic goes beyond “hands off.” In fact, developers are strongly encouraged to spend 20% of their work week working on whatever they want, as long as it’s not their main project.

This level of independence and creativity is fostered by Google’s product managers, who, according to employee forums, “make a product’s success their responsibility. They take an engineer’s curiosity (even if they are not engineers themselves) about how a product works, how much it costs in engineering time”, and can explain its mechanics to skeptics. They celebrate the others on their team, are endlessly positive, and serve as the team’s representative and foremost cheerleader. Finally, PMs for Google are fearless in defending their team’s ideas. They speak to founders the same way they speak to engineers and designers.”

The Nonprofit Quarterly reported this week on Starbucks’ annual CSR report. In 2010, Starbucks distributed a total of $22.4 million, including $17 million in corporate giving and $5.4 million in grants through the Starbucks Foundation.  Corporate philanthropy was $10.3 million in cash and $6.7 million in in-kind contributions to community building initiatives, including its commitment Product (RED)™ campaign. The corporation also makes “Youth Action Grants” to get young people to devote hundreds of thousands of hours to community service.

According to its 2010 CSR report, Starbucks energy use accounts for 80 percent of the company’s overall carbon footprint. This makes energy use, according to the company, “our greatest opportunity for improvement.”

These improvements include LED lighting initiatives, purchasing renewable energy and reducing water. During 2010, Starbucks has installed hand-meter facets to all company-owned stores conserving approximately 100 gallons of water per store per day.

Starbucks stores have also been incorporating many green building and design elements. That can mean anything from using reclaimed wood at the coffee bar to a completely LEED certified building. In 2010 six new or renovated company-owned stores achieve LEED certification in the United States and Canada.

Perhaps the thorniest issue in Starbucks’ environmental responsibility–one that is brought up repeatedly by critics–is the recycling of those ubiquitous white paper cups.

According to Ben Packard, vice president of Global Responsibility at Starbucks, “Cup recycling is an absolute priority.” The company has pledged to make 100 percent of its cups recyclable by 2015.

But Starbucks refuses to define “recyclability” simply by the material the cup is made of. Jim Hanna, the company’s director of environmental impact, says “we’re not going to call our cups recyclable until we know our customers actually have access to recycling.”

To that end, Starbucks has been holding “Cup Summits” in Seattle and Boston, involving government officials, material suppliers, cup manufacturers, recyclers, competitors, conservation groups and academic experts. The objective is to find a way to recycle Starbucks cups under the local municipal laws that make up the vast Starbucks market.

In the meantime, Starbucks has been conducting market tests on turning cups back into cups, or cups into napkins. Stores also offer a ten-cent discount on any drink made in a reusable cup. While the incentive might sound insignificant, the CSR report indicates that “this simple shift in behavior kept nearly 1.45 million pounds of paper out of landfills” in 2010.

On April 15 last year, every customer who brought in his or her own cup received a free cup of coffee – 1.2 million people participated. This year, Starbucks will celebrate Earth Day on April with the same program, so don’t forget to BYOC!

2011 marks the third year of Starbucks’ partnership with Lebanon’s Association for Forests, Development, and Conservation (AFDC). The two organizations joined forces to plant over 2000 trees during the weekends of February 19 and February 26, 2011 as part of AFDC’s annual national reforestation campaign to replace trees, which were lost to fires that spread across the country in recent years. The campaign brought together Starbucks managers and partners (baristas), AFDC members, and over 300 volunteers from different Lebanese universities, all determined to make a difference in preserving the environment.

In Dubai, Starbucks partners renovated the training facility room at Al Manzel School for Special Needs. The room was in terrible shape which prevented the center from using that space. Starbucks partners volunteered and cleared out the room, painted the walls and installed new doors. The Center faculty and children appreciated the partners’ efforts and were happy to spend time in their new training room.

Starbucks Oman Partners spent the day cleaning Al Qurum beach of trash and debris which was polluting the shoreline and posing a danger to people and marine life. The local area Municipality greatly appreciated the efforts of Starbucks partners in preserving the environment of Oman.