RESPONSE goes green

Sunday, 07 March 2010 00:00

One of the key elements of the RESPONSE success story is the commitment to attitude and behaviour change.

Glasgow-based outsourcing specialist RESPONSE first contacted Envirowise about improving its environmental impact in March 2009. The business provides a wide range of customer contact management services on behalf of major blue-chip brands and sought advice from Envirowise as part of its commitment to sustainability and long term growth.

One of the key elements of the RESPONSE success story is the commitment to attitude and behaviour change. Envirowise initially made a series of recommendations designed to reduce the company’s environmental impact while simultaneously making financial savings. However, managers initially came across resistance to the changes, and the recommendations had little impact on the day-to-day behaviour of employees.

Laura Robertson, Marketing Executive of RESPONSE, said: “At first we had some difficulty getting employees to implement some of the Envirowise recommendations. We realised that we needed to get them more involved in the changes and to help staff understand why those changes were important. It’s not easy to get 2,200 employees to change the way they have worked for years – it takes dedication and time.”

Green Team

The first step to behaviour change was to create a Green Team, whose goal was to improve internal exposure to the project. The Green Team is made up of individual advocates of environmental change and represents a cross section of the company, from telephone operators to managers and senior staff.

The Green Team is tasked with suggesting new ways of reducing the company’s environmental impact, as well as implementing any new initiatives. The team also ensures communication is filtered through all employee levels and that the environmental changes are being made effectively throughout the business.

Laura Robertson continued: “The Green Team is a hub for all our environmental work. They are our eyes and ears on the ground and are charged with ensuring we understand how our employees are reacting to new initiatives.

“After initially setting up the team with five employees around six months ago, we now often receive requests from staff to become part of the project while others are suggesting particularly engaged colleagues who would be suitable for roles. It really has become a team effort, and the group has now grown to around 12 employees.”

Go Green

RESPONSE started to communicate its commitment to helping the environment with a “Go Green” campaign. In order to demonstrate the commitment, the business established an Environmental Policy, which underlines its pledge to making changes as a business. This has even become a useful tool in pitches for new clients as companies are increasingly aware of environmental issues. The whole Environment Team contributed to the policy.

Communications to employees have been implemented through a number of different channels. These include using the RESPONSE intranet, which plays a central part in day-to-day business life at the company; posters were put up in key areas around each of its sites; and team leaders were tasked with galvanising interest during daily briefings. The business also committed to regular company-wide updates on progress and has also signed up to the 10:10 project to unite every sector of British society behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in the UK’s carbon emissions in 2010.

Simplicity is key

The key to successful employee engagement was to identify simple ways to communicate the wastefulness of their existing working practices – and therefore the real benefits of changing their ways.

For example, the Go Green campaign all started with a Recycling programme. Bins were removed from people’s desks and replaced with colour coded recycling points around the business. Waste is being measured in tonnes and related to the equivalent weight of a family car, to give the results a ‘real time’ measure. Other practical changes include:

• starting suggestions boxes at reception areas
• initiating a ‘duplex print system’ which sets all printers to duplex by default
• reminders not to print emails unless necessary
• communicating all results using real time measures such as trees for paper usage, flights for power consumption etc.

RESPONSE has already started to see real benefits from all its activities and the focus on changing the company culture is definitely paying off. In just nine months the business has:

• reduced electricity consumption by 14 per cent
• reduced carbon dioxide emissions by 12 tonnes per month
• reduced overall energy use per square metre of office space by 14.8 per cent
• reduced the amount of waste collected each month by 1.38 tonnes per month

Laura Robertson added: “With the support from Envirowise we’ve been able to increase staff awareness of the environmental issues we face as a business. People don’t necessarily make the link between saving energy and saving money – but the support from Envirowise has been invaluable in making us all change our ways. Old habits die hard but we are now on the road to a more sustainable future.”