Forward thinking is the name of the game at Seventh Generation, Inc., a 19-year-old marketer of environmentally responsible household products. It was foresight that led the company's President and "Chief Regeneration Officer," Jeffrey Hollender, to sell the catalog arm of his mail-order and retail business called Renew America to a Colorado-based company, while Vermont-based Hollender and his staff concentrated on growing the retail business. And forward thinking was literally behind the name change to Seventh Generation, which comes from a Native American expression which cautions that "in our every deliberation we must consider the impact of our decisions on the next seven generations."

But forward thinking is not merely something the company strives to achieve within its own work culture. Seventh Generation has the virtue of a purposeful product line that empowers its customers to make a difference in the world, one household cleaner spray or even one diaper change at a time. Therefore, Hollender, who Winning Workplaces named a Best Boss in 2006, gladly devotes 90 hours of training to first-year employees and 70 hours in their second and subsequent years because it translates to a similarly high level of education for the company's consumers. "Sometimes I think we're in the business of education more than anything else," Hollender says. "An ongoing challenge on the customer side is getting them to understand issues surrounding our products, such as the toxic chemicals found in most household products."

Because Seventh Generation sells its products through retailers whose customers are concerned with environmental responsibility, such as Whole Foods Market, those retailers become a key demographic in the chain toward the consumer. When we spoke with Seventh Generation's Supply Chain Director, Peter Swaine, he and 34 other staff members were busy preparing new and amended products and educational materials for the company's appearance at the Natural Products Expo West Trade Show, which starts this Friday and runs through the weekend in Anaheim, CA.

At other companies, engaging the bulk of the workforce for an event like this might be inconceivable, but at Seventh Generation it's par for the course. In 2005, after a 43 percent increase in staff, the company was "bursting at the seams" in its former location in downtown Burlington, according to its website. As luck would have it, an ideal space became available within walking distance of the current location.

However, the new space had to be designed. Hollender and the leadership set up several design consultations between the entire staff and the building architect, where ideas-turned-workplace realities like carpets made from recyclable materials and a place to plug in electric cars in the parking garage emerged. "Even after we moved into the space, employees had ideas left and right about the things we could do in our office to 'walk the talk,'" says Stephanie Lowe, manager of HR. These included both physical enhancements like saving discarded bathroom towels and tissues from landfills through composting, and procedural steps like being mindful about not over-running the dishwasher.

Now that the staff are in their new headquarters, Hollender is concentrating on managing their growth and development as revenues have grown. He is, once again, looking forward in terms of how they can give something back through teamwork. Seventh Generation is in the process of transitioning from several catch-all teams like the Green Team and the Work/Life Balance team to cross-disciplinary teams that will vary in title based on the issue at hand. "We're putting in a new computer system, so there's a cross-disciplinary team for that, and we're also developing a global warming strategy, and there's another team working on that," Hollender says.

The change in team focus is emblematic of a steady change in Seventh Generation's work culture, Lowe says. "The old teams were a chance for employees to get out of their normal job roles and work cross functionally, but we've really become a culture that works cross functionally all the time," she says. She adds that the new teams are "not just focused on coming up with new benefits or how to donate our time or our money, but on the changes that Seventh Generation wants to make in the world and coming up with strategies for what we're going to do as a company to make that happen."

The above-average training and teamwork opportunities at Seventh Generation all support the company's namesake mission: to devote time before taking any step to consider its impact on the future. This constant thought process among employees who are already committed to "saving the world" is a built-in retention strategy. "When you know more about the products and what they mean to the consumer, it 'puts more will into your work' as we say sometimes here," says Swaine.