Office Behavior re Energy & Water

Harvard's Office for Sustainability has developed a green office program with tiers of achievement. Perhaps you can use elements from the checklists here: http://www.green.harvard.edu/green-office.

Jenny Harvey
Program Coordinator for Sustainability
Harvard Real Estate Services
United States

Hi Jill,
Following are a few initiatives that we have undertaken to engage employees within the office environment:
- a close the blinds challenge (we focused on just Friday evenings starting in June for greater probability that we would have compliancy). Intended to control solar heat gain over the weekend and cut load on A/C come Monday morning.
- a space heater removal campaign. Employees were encouraged to give up their under-desk space heaters. Our approach was: give us three tries to properly balance the HVAC within your space and if you're still not comfortable we'll give the space heater back to you, but we'll give you a more energy efficient one.
- head to head monitor and computer shutdown challenge (department to department or tenant to tenant). We ran this for an entire month and told them that on a random, unannounced evening the janitorial staff would take a walk through their space and count how many monitors/computers were left on and whoever had the fewest was the winner.
- ugliest sweater competition - intended to encourage people to dress appropriately for the season instead of just turning up the heat.


Jennifer Davis
Canada

Hello Jill, I recently developed a program for the University-Medical District in Anchorage,to help the 10 partner organizations develop a culture of sustainability. This included a survey to baseline information on employee attitudes and behaviors, which served to alert employees that a conversation was beginning.
After assessing the situation to learn the current state of employee awareness and institutional measures, I developed a kit for the management team that included: sample policy statements, performance standards for managers and a collateral duty position description for a volunteer Sustainability Champion.
The plan called for me to work with the Sustainability Champions and employee groups offering short presentations at a staff meeting or brown bag session on the topics of energy in the office place; stand by power and lighting efficiency. I can share my slides and talking points with you.
This effort entails working with the public relations and human resources managers to dovetail with their corporate cultures and processes.
Once employee groups take inventory of the number of devices that can be unplugged, turned off, or manipulated in some way (closing blinds etc.) they begin to generate more ideas for energy saving and waste reduction.

Joette Storm, APR
Sustainability Coordinator
U-Med Green District

Very creative! Thanks to everyone who has replied so far.
Jenny - I loved the Green Office site and your four leafs.
Joette - Would love to see your Champion presentation. Is there a link?
Jennifer - And the space heater challenge - fun ideas!

thanks, Jill
(funny - Jenny, Joette, Jennifer and Jill, an alliterative energy group!)


Jill  Boone
Climate Change and Sustainability Manager
County of Santa Clara - Facilities and Fleet Dept.
United States

Hey there,

Quick idea to add to all the other great ones. Offer a monthly drawing for a free lunch, breakfast, whatever. Each time someone carpools, walks, bikes, takes public transit to work, they can put their name in the fishbowl to be drawn. This way you can track the behavior too!

Sarah Lachance
Chair
Kennebunkport Conservation Commission
United States
www.campaignearth.org

Hi Jill,

Last year we did a big energy use reduction campaign for our employees. Everyone in the building works for an environmental assistance and regulatory agency, so were highly motivated. We don't own the building so we made a deal with our landlord that he would do what he could to improve the building envelope and we would work on employee actions to reduce energy use and we would split the money saved. We focused on 3 main behaviors; turning off our monitors, closing the blinds and turning off stuff when not in use such as lights above the desks, rechargers, and the like. We are not allowed to have space heaters or individual coffee pots at our desk for safety reasons but we ultimately wanted to get rid of all the personal 'dorm' fridges around the building. We knew that would be controversial so we did not start there.

In good CBSM fashion, we surveyed the staff about barriers to the behaviors we wanted. It was mostly 'I forget'. We did find that some of the blinds didn't work and sometimes the cords weren't long enough etc. People also thought that if their computer was off the monitor must be too. I can send you the survey and results if you are interested.

Once armed with data we used commitment, prompts, periodic updates and the personal touch to get people to do our focus behaviors. Our IT folks put a pop-up window on all the computers when people log out to remind them to turn off their monitor. There were signs on the floors to remind people to turn stuff off. We had to change it up though, because people got habituated to the reminders. We sent out occasional updates with the amount of energy we were saving and had an on-line commitment form people could use.

After less than a year we had saved over $9,000. We used part of the proceeds to purchase new, energy efficient fridges for the break rooms and then warned people they would be required to get rid of the personal fridges by June 30th. It was not as big a fight as we anticipated and we allowed some for storage of medical supplies.

As it gets cold here, we will need to reinvigorate our campaign and we will be going for some additional actions like removing bulbs by the windows and turning on the lights later etc.

If you have any questions please contact me,

Cathy Jensen
Minnesota Pollution Control Agency
United States

Hi Jill & others who have posted
Cathy - I would love to see a copy of your employee survey.
We have just had an energy audit done at our main sites & have for some time been monitoring employee behaviour around switching off their monitors at lunchtimes, & leaving a small treat for those that do, without any noticeablle trend in improvement. It might be timely to do a survey to identify the barriers around this & other energy conservation behaviours & it be great to not have to reinvent the wheel.
Thanks
Barbara

Barbara Hammonds
Taranaki Regional Council
New Zealand

Hi Cathy,

I too would love a copy of your survey. We are in the process of developing a sustainability strategy for the organisation (Shire) and developed a quick survey to ID barriers yet the more we can find the beeter as I plan on doing more as we go along.

We are takling the behaviour change through having a team of people develop the strategy, different people work in different areas and these are the champions to encourage behaviour change. Having me go at it alone across an orgnaisation was decided would not result in change as well as people within their departments pushing the message.

eo 
Environmental Projects Officer
Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley
Australia

We conducted an Employee Energy Challenge last yaer and saved $70,000 from six building at the City. We also extended it to a local high-school - they saved $53,000 from JUST behavior changes. Attached is the slide show we used for outreach.

Happy holidays!

Dr Rosemarie Russo

Dr Rosemarie  Russo
Sustainability Coordinator
City of Fort Collins
United States

Hi Cathy,
Yes, "me too" would like a copy of your survey. Appreciate that very much.
I'm trying to develop a curriculum that I can cast at the High Sxhool students and the general population as well.
Energy use reduction, recycling, water in aquifers and general vigilence in garbage disposal are some areas I'm working on.
Progress is slow and we need to be persistant.
Donald Costin
Chilliwack, B.C. Canada
President eco-logicbc and environmental support group.

Donald Costin
President
AC Innovations
Canada

Hi Rosemarie,
I'm interested in your slide show.
How do I go about obtaining a copy of the slides?
Thanks.

Donald Costin
President
AC Innovations
Canada

Hi Rosemarie,

I am interested in seeing copies of your slides. It appears they are not attached.

Thanks,

Matshepo Molala
TAFE NSW-Sydney Institute
Australia

Hi Rosemarie,

We would be very interested to see a copy of your slide presentation too.

Wishing all a very Happy Christmas.

Rita Granata
SWAHS Waste Management Coordinator
Sydney West Area Health Service
Australia