How to engage employees in sustainability and energy saving
Engaging employees is crucial to any successful sustainability strategy. As the people who will be championing your green objectives, it’s vitally important that they are completely on board with your plans. We’re often asked what the most effective way to engage employees is, and our message is that passion, transparency and continuity are key.
On a recent site energy audit, the facilities manager told us how he had tried many times to encourage staff to use less energy, with little success. The problem, he told us, was that none of the energy bills were split into departmental costs, they all simply came to him. The different departments had no idea how much energy they were using, or how much it cost.
This is a common problem in many workplaces; at some stage almost all businesses experience the energy draining ‘heating on, air-conditioning on/windows open’ combination. It would be easy to attribute this lack of consideration to a careless and negligent attitude towards the environment and company costs, but recognising the drivers behind this behaviour could identify a positive opportunity for change.
All too often, managers and business owners despair over their high energy costs, but don’t effectively convey these problems to staff. These employees will probably know how much their home electricity bill is, and they will adapt their behaviour in order to keep this cost down – switching off lights, turning plugs off and shutting equipment down fully. Why do they do this? Because they are equipped with the knowledge and resources to reduce or stabilise their bills, and there is a benefit to themselves in doing this. We can’t expect our employees to reduce energy usage and costs if they don’t know how much they’re using to begin with.
We believe that everyone should be encouraged to take ownership of the environmental aspects of the workplace. Tell your staff about your increasing energy costs, in real terms using real numbers. Explain to them why it is important that you, as a company, work together to bring the energy costs down. Involve them in the process and make it a joint venture, ask them how they think you could all use less energy, set some targets and some rewards if the targets are achieved and surpassed. And finally, invest in your sustainability strategy by giving employees the opportunity to go on training courses in order to learn more and save energy more effectively and with a little more passion. Because these are the people who are going to be making the everyday changes to save you money.
To repeat a well-known phrase, they really are your most valuable asset, and investing in them will encourage positivity towards you as an employer, and make for a productive and happy working environment.
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1 Comment for this entry
Breakdown your energy bills
It is not an ...
Would you like to save 40% on energy bills?
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thomas
Love the blog