Whoever is the last to leave, don't forget to turn the computers off!

Just a quick follow on from last week's post about green buildings and work cultures. This is a finding from a staff habits survey at the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency. According to the Scotland on Sunday, they found that of the agency's 1,700 computers, 400 were regularly being left on at night and of those only 100 were deemed necessary to do so. So, at least 300 computers were being left on when they didn't need to be. Of course, many people are aghast that the agency meant to protect the environment was wasting so much energy. I think though it shows how hard it is to change work cultures and how easily we slip into habits. Sometimes, it is as simple as people not realizing it is their responsibility, sometimes it is about scheduling whereby someone leaves their computer on thinking they will be back in the office before the end of the day but isn't, and sometimes it is simply a habit. SEPA discovered these habits through a staff survey and have now taken measures to turn their computers off at night. Seems like a good idea to me!

J2 Research can help you do a similar investigation in your business. Are your employees turning off their computers when they leave?

--Judith
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Green buildings and work cultures

We have been thinking this past week about green buildings and work cultures. As we mentioned last week, green buildings are an important part of being a green company and should be a focus for any green minded business. While we both love the creativity and cleverness of the engineering and architectural solutions of green buildings, it occurs to us that the humans who use those buildings are often left out of the picture.  Indeed, even the United Nations Environmental Programme in their report, "Buildings: Investing in energy and resource efficiency"  note that "when considering the environmental credentials of buildings, the true measure of their performance only becomes evident with occupation, given the impact of factors such as behaviour (cultural habits, environmental expectations and life-style), climatic changes and particularities of the control of technical systems in buildings" (p.339). Although clearly the human side is important to measure, the UNEP points out that most do not.

So, since most people are not thinking about this, we will. In particular, we want to focus our thinking on green office buildings and work behaviours and cultures. Here is a list of some of the issues we think are important to consider:

Being green: thinking about product and production

Amongst all companies there is a growing awareness that taking account of the environment is important for business. Being green aware is good for the planet, the bottom line and can give a competitive edge.

We live in Denmark and quite rightly many Danes are proud of the wind energy sector and Denmark’s role in it. According to the Climate Consortium Denmark, Denmark is a specialist in producing offshore wind turbines. They claim that Denmark produces, “More than 90% of all offshore wind turbines worldwide” and “almost half the world’s wind turbines.” That’s a lot of turbines! And this is a growing market, growing at about 30% a year. This is an industry that in Denmark alone employs 25,000 people in about 350 companies.

But is it enough to simply produce things for the green economy?

Flexible working and unintended benefits

Fast paced modern life

Back in 2001, I wrote "Time Out: the case for time sovereignty" with Richard Reeves. We argued that organizing work by time rather than task arose from and belonged to the Industrial era. In the past, work was organized by task and we made a case for organizing work in the future in a more flexible way.

There are very good reasons for questioning the time structure and schedule of work. Not least, because it challenges the simple equation of hours in equals productivity. It questions whether there is a linear match between longer hours and more productivity. We all know that there is a point where working more is not the same as working smart or efficiently. In addition, measuring work by hour in rather than output can encourage behaviours like presenteeism. This is when people are present, their bums are in their seats, but they are not actively engaged in their work.