Behaviour Change in Organisations
Organisations often want to reduce their ecological footprint in terms of waste, water, energy and travel. There are various reasons for this including:
- To deal with a specific problem such as rising costs or lack of space.
- To meet environmental targets of the organisation.
- To improve the organisation’s image as an employer and as a corporate citizen amongst peers. This can be a point of difference between competing organisations (e.g. utilities, banks).
- Making an office ‘green’ will involve all staff in doing something for the environment. Many people have found that since motivated staff are productive staff – they have found an increase in productivity. With most office-based workplaces spending about 100 times as much on wages as they do on energy, small increases in staff productivity can have major impacts on profitability and the bottom line.
SKM’s behaviour change approach to Green Offices focuses strongly on making sure that change is led by the employees – helping them to help themselves. This not only ensures that the changes implemented have a high take up rate, but also that, since they are owned by the organisation, will continue even when one or the other of key people leading the change has left the organisation.
SKM also has experience in designing how to measure change in these types of projects.