Save on your office’s energy bill: change your energy behaviour

Watching the outside temperature drop and your energy bills rise may recently remind you of math lessons on inverse proportionality. Many operations and finance managers look towards the upcoming winter nervously, as the energy consumption will impact the P&L as hard as an artillery shell the in the absurd war. While manufacturing and other energy-heavy companies may give to the Russian winter a new meaning, even those operating from a comfy offices are wondering how to mitigate their operating expenses. The change management toolbox can help even with such a challenge and change the energy behaviour in your office.

Setting the objective to control the energy consumption in your offices, the first step is to understand the Change Causality Map of the envisioned change. For most offices, the energy consumption comes from heating/cooling, lighting, powering computers and other appliances. Although seemingly obvious, the question is what variables influence these and how to actively control them. Because one strategy will certainly fail, despite being so popular: asking the managers to ask their teams to be more savvy…

Therefore, taking a step further into the real change leavers — and you soon realise that critical factors are occupancy in the office, control over thermostats or switches and how you power the computers.

Promote remote working

The office occupancy is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the more people in a confined space, the more heat their bodies will produce, creating cozy inner temperature. Resembles the Matrix movie, turning humans into energy cells to heat up the office space, doesn’t it? For such a scenario, you should encourage people to come to the office, work really closely together and reduce the remote working. Perhaps tempting for some managers.

But I would rather encourage the opposite. Promoting the remote working will have more significant impact on your energy bill: less people in the office means lower demand for heating, lighting and less running computers. You may also consider the secondary remote working effect: less fuel or electricity is consumed by your employees for the commuting — good for their wallets and for the planet too.

Take control over the thermostats

Heating and cooling the office space depends — putting aside the construction and layout aspects, which you typically cannot effectively or immediately control — on how much freedom your employees have over thermostats and windows. How many times have you seen the heater almost steaming under the open window all day long?

If your office setup permits, you should set the heating centrally to an acceptable(!) temperature — and disable the thermostats controls located in the offices for anybody to play with. Before doing so, I however recommend to discuss with your people what is the acceptable temperature and try to settle on some consensus here. Your intention should be to save the energy, not make them catch cold. You should also remove any additional portable plug-in heaters, unless you have no other heating sources installed.

Besides controlling how much heat you produce, you should also watch for the temperature loss. In most case, that would be through open windows. The ones on your buildings façade, not those on your computers.

Save on screensavers

Modern office is full of running and buzzing computers and laptops. When not in use, fancy screensavers usually pop up and bounce company’s logo around the screens. As most companies can setup the computers remotely, it may be a good idea to set all the screensavers to just a black screen and to shorten the go-idle time. A step further is to introduce a new habit for your people: closing down the laptop lid when leaving their desks.

Move at the speed of light

Those short grey winter days and dusk that comes way too early. Sparkling the mood in the office with a good set of shining lightbulbs is so desirable and the impact of good lighting should not be understated! But there are spaces and places in your offices, where permanent lighting is not necessary — corridors, kitchenettes, technical rooms, meeting rooms or restrooms. Instead of pleading the employees to turn off the switches, install the motion sensors. The initial investment is relatively negligible, but the saving may be substantial. And speaking of lighting, think of more efficient LED bulbs, if you didn’t already

Gamification, make it fun

The above tips require some cooperation from your employees. Without their buy-in, you may just try to impose some unpopular measures. So explain them why you want to be more savvy on the energy. I believe it is great idea not just for your opex, but how to become a more responsible and environmentally aware company. And make it fun for the people, make that change in their behaviour competitive. Set a target for the energy consumption and follow it daily. Share it, make it visible, announce a competition, make it a collective sport.

For an office-based company without any manufacturing or other energy-heavy operation, you may not save substantial amounts of money. But you may turn the winter hassle into some positive and meaningful theme for your people. And it’s small steps, but consistent steps, that move us forward.