The environmental impact of the workplace
June 30, 2008
There was a short feature on the breakfast news this morning about how organisations need to make changes to the way they impact on the environment. Many people now take more responsibility for things like recycling and energy efficiency in their homes, but this still needs to be transferred into a lot of workplaces. In my organisation, we recycle paper and card board, but that has only really started to take place in the last few months. As the presenter commented this morning; if you go through any city at night time, even in the middle of the night, there are lights on in offices all over the place when there’s nobody there. It was suggested that some places may have cleaners working in the night or people working later in the evening, but I suspect for a lot of the office spaces it is more about the way the building looks with the lights on when it’s dark outside, particularly in a city centre where everything looks trendy and stylish.
On the breakfast programme there was the owner/manager of a business that was trying to change the company culture and working processes to be more eco-friendly, and an eco-auditor that works with companies to do this. The main point they were making was that to make environmentally friendly processes work in organisations, ‘permission’ or buy in is needed from the top, so the boss needs to demonstrate his/her commitment to the eco-agenda in order for this to be properly championed at every level. The auditor said that this needs to be done from bottom up as well, with workshops for staff to change attitudes and develop the culture from within.
A good place to start with this is to develop a report on the areas that can be improved, researching methods of improving efficiency and reducing wastage, and attaching costs to this (any boss that needs convincing on the reasons for developing the report will like this part). The Carbon Trust estimates that an average office wastes around £6,000 per year through leaving equipment on when it’s not needed, but a colleague of mine recently calculated this to around £13,000 for the office I work in!
The report can then be developed into a policy, with sections on the different areas. These sections may cover things like recycling, energy efficiency, and schemes such as car sharing and flexible working to reduce travel (this will also be a popular one in terms of cost reduction for employees!).
The most important aspect of this project however will be the communication of it. This is where workshops or even just a presentation will be valuable. Employees need to understand the commitment the organisation is taking to contribute to the eco-agenda, and as I said before, this needs to be sponsored by senior level management. One good point made this morning was that some sceptical employees may feel that the company is only making changes for reasons of cost saving or profit making, but to counter this an incentive may be included, for example that a proportion of costs saved will be given back to employees, e.g. in a bonus or on a particularly good Christmas party.
For companies that are really serious about their environmental impact, organisations such as The Carbon Trust help businesses reduce or negate their carbon footprint. Also, environmental management standards such as ISO 14001 are a way to systemise your approach to making the company eco-friendly, and in addition the standard allows the company to demonstrate its commitment to sustainability to customers, suppliers or indeed prospective employees. I imagine that in future these kinds of standards will become statutory requirements for businesses as the Government increases its legislative programme relating to green issues. I reported back in February that ‘environmental beliefs’ could be viewed as part of the Employment Equality (Religion or Belief) Regulations 2003, (which will form part of the Equality Bill in future). So this topic is something that organisations cannot afford to ignore for much longer, for reasons of legality if nothing else.
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