For Organisations
Staff awareness
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| "The finger" - the most powerful energy saving device in the world |
We believe that annual energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions can be significantly reduced through raising building user awareness. Raising awareness will lead to behavioural changes in people and many constructive suggestions for projects.
- Top management support
- Energy awareness survey
- "Energy Champions Team"
- Running the campaign
- Evaluating the results
1. Top level management support
Top Management support is vital to the success of awareness campaigns. This support can be expressed in a number of ways; such as in a formal policy statement on energy management, enthusiasm and involvement in the campaign, leading by example and encouraging other employees to be energy conscious.
2. Conduct an energy awareness survey
The purpose of the energy awareness survey will be to:
- ascertain the current level of employee awareness and behaviour regarding energy efficiency in the workplace
- to find out what values motivate energy efficient behaviour
- to identify past, existing and potential barriers to energy efficient behaviour
- to collect ideas for saving energy
- pre-campaign and post-campaign survey results can be used as one performance indicator of campaign success
3. Energy Champion Team to develop campaign
Employee involvement can be sought in the campaign design and implementation as it is important to develop workplace champions; to get employee’s input regarding what approaches will and won’t work and to develop a sense of ownership regarding the campaign.
The methodology also needs to target ways to spread the word throughout the entire organisation and then to permanently maintain the heightened level of energy awareness - one potentially powerful way of doing this is by motivating employees to motivate each other.
Representatives should be enthusiastic, innovative individuals who are interested in reducing the energy consumption of their work area. Champions could be either self nominated or nominated by management.
The Office Services Manager should be a team member, cleaners and security guards can help a lot and at least one middle to senior management representative would bring a management perspective to the campaign development.
Energy Champion Team members can be required to attend a workshop including after hours walk-through audits and feedback meetings after the campaign. During the Campaign Development Workshops, team members can learn and share ideas about energy conservation in the workplace and develop campaign strategies.
Depending on the final campaign structure, further permission may be sought for Energy Champions to be directly involved in the campaign and follow-up activities as Energy Champions could operate along similar lines to Occupational Health and Safety officers with representatives in work areas.
It is expected that in the future BSS will support on-going heightened energy awareness through means such as electronic newsletters, competitions, an electronic discussion group and periodic Energy Champions networking meetings.
4. Run campaign
Details of this stage can be developed by the Energy Champions or Energy Management Team and discussed with management prior to finalisation.
5. Evaluate pilot campaign performance
The campaign's success can be evaluated and reported on several weeks after the launch of the campaign and again in six months time. Evaluation tools can include:
- data loggers installed to record the time profiles of energy use on each floor (where technically feasible)
- the building’s power bills
- walk through audits to determine which equipment was left on overnight and on weekends before and after the campaign
- before and after staff attitude surveys