Probably the two greatest challenges
we face at the moment are the economic crisis and
climate change. For businesses and public sector
organisations alike the response to both of these
challenges means doing more for less. Reducing
costs, and reducing the use of energy and resources.
Key to this is changing the way we
work. Working flexibly. Working smarter. And there
has never been a time like the present to make the
changes needed.
Putting numbers on the savings
To make the case for change, and to
understand the kinds of changes needed,
organisations need to measure and analyse their
current ways of working. This includes costs of
buildings and facilities, levels of occupancy,
work-related travel, technology costs, recruitment
and retention, absence and staff satisfaction.
A traditional workplace operating
standard working hours is actually only used for
around 30% of the time – taking account of
non-working hours, weekends and public holidays. And
within that 30% of normal used time, occupancy
levels are rarely above 45% in measured studies.
Waste is built in to the traditional
ways of working. And there’s a big carbon cost to
this too. Transforming offices to modern flexible
working environments with an emphasis on
collaboration rather than desk work is the way
forward. And this enables organisations to shrink
their space to match actual demand.
It’s also wasteful to spend so much
time, money and resources commuting. Having the UK
working population travel billions of miles each
year to spend time using computers and telephones –
which can be done from anywhere – is an
intrinsically unsustainable thing to do.
A full-time worker travelling the
average UK commute distance by car will spend over
200 hours on the road, travelling nearly 4000 miles
and generate 1187 kg of CO2. Yet much of the work
that is done can be done from pretty much anywhere
there is a broadband connection. Working from home,
or working in third-party workhubs closer to home,
is quite possible.
Greater mobility in working creates
further opportunities to shrink property
requirements and in doing so shrink the carbon
footprint of working practices.
Leading companies are making big
inroads into business travel by using new
communications technologies to replace meetings, and
developing effective virtual teamworking. Aviva
(cited in the recent CBI report, ‘Tackling
Congestion, Driving Growth’) has installed high
definition Telepresence conferencing suites in its
main regional offices. This has helped them to
reduce air travel by 17% and business car travel by
19%. There are many such examples, and we’ll be
showcasing a number at our forthcoming event.
Using flexible work strategically
There has been a tendency to
characterise flexible working as a ‘nice-to-have’,
and see it as mainly about equalities and work-life
balance. The key is to use it strategically, rather
than responding ad hoc to staff requests. In this
way flexible working becomes a powerful tool to
increase efficiency and agility, and to improve
environmental performance.
We’re exploring these issues further
with business leaders at a conference in London on
July 7th – Save Money, Save the Planet! How to
align the business and carbon benefits of flexible
working.
For further details, see panel above
right.
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