Greener Working Can Save Millions
David Bent, Head of Business Strategies at Forum for the Future, describes how O2 used the opportunity of relocation to introduce an effective greener working programme – and introduces a webinar on the the use of communications technology for greener working.
Communications technology can help organisations introduce greener, more productive working practices and save millions in the process.
When O2 moved to new headquarters earlier this year it put in place a greener working programme with impressive results: £3.84m saved in hot-desking alone; 100% of flexible workers reporting better work-life balance; absenteeism down; and a 53% reduction in head office CO2 emissions.
Forum for the Future has been helping O2 develop and implement its sustainability strategy for the last few years so they invited me to open this webinar on how to use communications technology to enable greener working. I was asked why the agenda should be important to organisations. The basic answer: you can save money while getting ready for a carbon-constrained future.
You can watch the webinar to find out more about the technology O2 used to achieve its results and, crucially, the way they involved people in creating the new social practices around how to use that technology well.
My opening is much more about the scale and urgency of the challenge of climate change. The Sustainable Development Commission’s Prosperity without Growth illustrates the scale: we will need to get 130 times more economic value for every gram of CO2 emitted by 2050. The Met Office’s report on Informing Choices gives the urgency: to have a 50% chance of avoiding 2 degrees of warming we must have peak global emissions by 2020, with 5% reductions each year thereafter.
Greener working will never be the full answer. But it is a start that most organisations can make that does have financial returns now. An astute business person can use it to start exploring the opportunity for their business to profit from moving to a carbon-constrained world.
This article was originally published on the Forum for the Future blog.
Forum for the Future is the UK’s leading sustainable development NGO. It works internationally with government, business and public service providers, helping them to develop strategies to achieve success through sustainability, to deliver products and services which enhance people’s lives and are better for the environment, and to lead the way to a better world. Visit www.forumforthefuture.org
August 14, 2010
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