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Culture determines how people think and behave in any workplace. That means establishing an energy saving culture is a necessary part of any energy saving plan or behaviour change campaign. By working on an energy saving culture, you are creating an environment for bright ideas, increased efficiency and reduced operating costs.

Getting employees to participate in energy-saving habits is an effective way to help reduce energy costs. It’s crucial that you engage your entire team in this process. Change can be a challenge for some employees, so make sure to present it positively. Here are the 6 pillars of engagement:

Educate

Do your employees know the biggest energy-draining habits in the workplace? Why don’t you post business energy saving tips for employees in conspicuous areas around the office. Friendly reminders can be a good nudge in the right direction, especially if they’re about turning off lights or powering down equipment. Sharing insights into your office’s electric bills can also help employees see just how much energy is consumed.

Make it personal

When people understand why they are doing something new – instead of simply being told to change long-time energy habits without a reason – they are less likely to push back against new policies and procedures. Helping them understand this involves them too, so they can have a real impact.

Make it fun

People love games, especially as a break from the daily work routine. Give everyone an hour off to search for somewhere the business is leaking energy —leaking faucets or toilets, computers that stay on too long, heated rooms that aren’t used, ... The idea is to make it fun and get people excited around energy savings.

Make it a team effort

It’s good to personally feel the importance of energy saving. However, going the extra mile while your colleagues are cutting corners is extremely frustrating. To avoid that, create team projects that make entire teams responsible for coming up with ways to improve energy efficiency in the workplace. An example: for a month, you could put marketing in charge of monitoring utility bills and offering suggestions for ways to reduce them.

Encourage

You could encourage employees to bring innovative energy-saving ideas in the workplace to regular staff meetings. Or maybe have some way for them to share anonymously! Find a way that would be most effective to get everyone on board suitable for your company culture. You could perhaps create an award to celebrate employees who help meet certain energy conservation goals. It’s a signal to the company that this is important.

Walk the walk

Make sure to practice what you preach. When employees see the business’s management investing in energy-efficient appliances, devices and office equipment, they take notice. Making moves like this within the company can cause a workplace culture shift in an energy-efficient direction.

Using these and other employee engagement ideas in the office can help save energy in the workplace while retaining great team members. In the end... It’s all about communication. 

Communicate your energy saving vision, actions to be undertaken, roles people play in this change, and above all else, the results that are achieved through a focus on reducing energy use.

To be able to give insights to your employees and communicate results, gathering all the data that various systems in your building collect is a must. You need to centralize the data to be able to end up with the crystal clear dashboarding you need as a basis to communicate and keep all people involved. A Building Operating System like ICONICS gives you a real-time overview using clear dashboards to keep track of your company’s progress, and that of your employees.

Interested to find out how ICONICS software can benefit your organisation’s energy saving strategy? Contact us without any obligation.