A new report commissioned by Moneypenny and WORKTECH Academy has identified four different types of corporate approaches to sustainability, to help firms establish just how green they are, along with key guidelines on how they can contribute further to their ESG credentials and wider society.
ESG (Environment, Social and Governance) strategies have risen to the top of the agenda in all organisations globally, and employees and investors are demanding greater sustainability.
The new Moneypenny/Worktech report launched today, highlights the key challenges of sustainability, outlining how new ways of working are driving change in sustainability. To help organisations evaluate their ESG status and goals, the report identifies four green corporate typologies:
1. PLACEMAKERS: Placemaking organisations use their office building as the canvas on which to display their green credentials and aims. They’re more likely to occupy green buildings, adopt smart technology, install recycling facilities, employ energy-efficient design, and introduce sustainable transport provisions, to improve their environmental impact on the world.
Companies adopting this approach frequently build new buildings, such as Google’snew campus in London’s King’s Cross, that has provision for more than 600 bicycles compared to just four car parking spaces.
2. CHANGEMAKERS: This group, while still largely office-based, understands the value of influencing green behaviour through social support and peer-to-peer encouragement. In the context of the post-pandemic workplace, change-makers will use the ‘return to office’ window of opportunity to encourage employees to modify behaviours in the workplace. These organisations, which include Coca-Cola, Intel, and eBay, empower employee-led initiatives in the workplace and have ‘green champions’ to drive that change.
Pharmaceutical giant Genentech has aptly named its green team the ‘Green Genes’. In its goal to educate and empower employees to be more sustainable, the company sponsors monthly guest speakers, holds movie nights focusing on sustainability issues, and hosts an annual eco-party. It also introduced composting to its cafeteria, and saved $200,000 a year by replacing plastic water bottles with filtered water machines.
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By GlobalData3. CHOICE-GIVERS: Choice-givers are organisations that use new ways of working and flexible work policies to give employees the autonomy to work anywhere and make green choices for themselves, including outside of the office – such as working from home to reduce their carbon footprint through reduced travel. For example, printing giant Xerox Design allowed 8,000 of its 27,000 employees to work remotely full-time, resulting in its employees driving 92 million fewer miles and saving 4.6 million gallons of fuel, cutting CO₂ emissions by almost 41,000 metric tons annually.
Similarly, US-based computer company Sun Microsystems has allowed 24,000 employees to work from home since 2008, and calculates that office equipment energy consumption at a Sun office was twice that of home office energy consumption, and that the average commute for an employee into the office accounted for 98% of their carbon footprint.
4. ARBITRATORS: Arbitrators are the organisations extending sustainability beyond the office building, to the wider community on behalf of their workforce. These organisations understand that even if fewer people work from the office every day, they still have a degree of corporate responsibility for their employees – and they are likely to offer subsidised transport and smart home energy solutions for employees, as well as to run community-minded green initiatives.
For example, companies such as Google, Apple, Facebook and Johnson & Johnson provide subsidised sustainable transport for their employees via bike travel, group shuttle buses, and public transport. Other organisations, such as Goldman Sachs, have supported smart home energy solutions for employees, or subsidised residential recycling bins.
Moneypenny tips on how to calculate whether outsourcing will help reduce a company’s carbon footprint
· Start by calculating how many fulltime equivalent (FTE) team members are employed to undertake communications tasks such as answering the phone, handling live chat, or reception duties within your business? FTE is calculated as 8 hours per day x 5 days per week x 52 weeks per year = 2080 hours. If your team is a general admin team, are you able to total how much of their time is spent working on these tasks? For example, with 4 team members allocated to this type of work, spending 25% of their time answering customer questions, you would have 1 FTE employed on these duties.
· Look at where your team members are based? If they’re in the office, use Moneypenny’s standard office carbon measurement to work out how much carbon each FTE is using: total carbon emissions of the office running costs per year divided by total FTEs divided by 12 = Carbon Use per FTE by month. Commuting: The Carbon Trust calculates that, on average, the typical commuter uses 36.67kg per month dependent on the journey time, with a journey of only 4 miles from home by car, resulting in significant savings from home working.
· If your team members are at home, use Bulb’s handy home working calculator to measure their carbon impact, including: laptops & lighting = 6.14kg of CO₂ per FTE per month (40-hour week), Home heating = 87.26kg of CO₂ per FTE per month (40-hour week), No commuting = 0kg carbon
Due to outsourcing companies like Moneypenny’s location, efficiency and carbon neutral environment, the number of personnel needed to handle your comms tasks will be lower, and the consequent emissions will be lower.
Joanna Swash, Group CEO of Moneypenny comments, “Through working in close partnership with organisations large and small, we’ve been witnessing a growing requirement for sustainability in the workplace. We commissioned the WORKTECH Academy report to explore how our services can support and nurture this valuable business need, but what we discovered is important for all organisations to consider.
“What is important to recognise is that the four typologies of a sustainable organisation are not mutually exclusive. Moneypenny, for example, has traits in all four. A placemaker because our HQ was built with environmental goals in mind, a changemaker because of our eco-pennies employee-led sustainable living group, which shaped our HQ and so much more since then. We are also classed as a choice-giver as we invested in technology to make hybrid working a viable and successful option, and also an arbitrator, as we are engaging with the wider community and choosing to offset our UK carbon emissions.”
To find out more about the four green typologies of the post-covid workplace as well as the changing parameters of ESG responsibility and how Moneypenny outsourcing services can help shape sustainable change, download the Moneypenny and WORKTECH Academy report ‘From Place to People’, here:
