No, we’re not talking the kind of green featuring presidents, we’re talking the kind of green that makes the earth happy and environmentally conscious people get all warm and fuzzy.  Genesys recently conducted a survey of 15,000 users to see how their companies were addressing green issues over the holidays. 

You can read the results by clicking the survey link above, but let’s focus on the “5 Top Tips for a Greener Workplace”.
 

1.  Turn off lights, computers and office equipment in empty cubes, offices and low-traffic common areas
This seems like common sense, but walk around your office after hours and I bet you’d be surprised how many electronic devices are left on.  I’ve always been one of those people who go around turning things off, but that was mainly because my old man was a miser and to save a few pennies on the electric bill would constantly remind us to turn stuff off.  So was he an environmentalist ahead of his time or just cheap?  Put your money on the latter.

2. Avoid decorations that use electricity and display a live tree that can then be planted outside the building
This is a tough one because people enjoy the pageantry of bright, shiny, colorful things that bring a glow to cold winter nights.  This is where you have to get creative.  I once asked the lead singer of the Flaming Lips, who are famous for outlandish live shows, if it was difficult to bring their brand of craziness to a show during the day.  He replied, “You just have to go about it in a different way.”  So instead of an energetic light show they employed dancing Santa’s, gyrating aliens, a plethora of confetti canons and a large plastic bubble that he would use to navigate the crowd.  All it takes is some good old fashioned imagination from your company’s think-outside-the-box types and you can easily be festive and green at the same time. 

3. Avoid unnecessary travel – the #1 polluter – by providing virtual meeting capabilities for people working from home during their vacation
Almost everyone in the business world has high speed internet access in their house, making the holidays a great time to allow them to work from home.  Using Genesys Meeting Center you can hold productive meetings, collaborate on documents or even conduct training without having to commute into the office.  Plus, there’s something mischievous about discussing the coming year’s corporate strategy in your pajamas.
 

4.  Relax dress codes to save on laundry and dry cleaning energy                      Now this is a policy I can really get behind.  I would even take it one further and allow your employees to wear shorts and t-shirts because this would even further cut back on laundry and dry cleaning.  In this post dot com world the shorts and T-shirts might not fly, but introducing casual dress for the holidays is an easy way to save energy.  Besides, do you really work differently based on your wardrobe?  

5.  Close cafeterias and use money saved for special treats to reward people for brown-bagging it  I have mixed feelings about this suggestion, but it does make sense.  Again, my scrooge-like old man made me brown bag it all through my school years, so once I had my own money I left my brown bagging days behind me.  However, throwing in a monetary incentive, casual dress or additional days off would motivate me to break out the old brown bags again.  It’s peanut butter jelly time!  Peanut butter jelly time! Peanut butter jelly time! Peanut butter jelly, peanut butter jelly, peanut butter jelly with a baseball bat!
 

These are just a few suggestions to make your workplace greener for the holidays.  I think our EVP of Marketing, Denise Persson, said it best;

“Creating a Greener workplace for the Holidays can be a communal company effort that instills pride and encourages teamwork. We asked our customers for their favorite Green Holiday workplace tips and are sharing some that any company can easily put in place.”

 Erik Crawford – Web Marketing Manager

Everywhere you look these days the Green movement is on the march.  So it came as little surprise, after finding out that I won the Nigerian Lottery for the third time this month, the next e-mail I opened was about the company working to become ISO 14001 compliant.  In other words, Genesys was going green.  Recycle bins hit the break rooms faster than the sweet-toothed assistant who got the e-mail about birthday cake.  Weekly education sessions disguised as trivia and puzzles motivated my co-workers to participate.  The Green movement was in full swing.

I’ve always recycled at home, and I never litter, thanks to the 1970’s ad campaign where the Native American cries a single tear after seeing the large pile of waste, but at work everything seemed to make its way into the closest trash can. After the wave of information provided by my company, something started happening to my environmentally apathetic attitude.  I started making the extra effort to sort my bottles and cans, and I’d walk the extra 20 feet to deposit waste paper into the proper recycle bin. 

Like an extended version of “The More You Know” the Genesys environmental policy was taking hold.  What really hit home were the statistics:

One London to New York flight emits around 1.54 tons of C02 emissions, which is equivalent to:

1. Leaving the TV on standby for 102 years
2. Leave your hairdryer on for 14 weeks
3. A Car idling for 28 days
4. The House lights on for 8 months
5. A Kettle boiling for 75 days 

This is exactly why I don’t fly anymore.  OK, maybe that’s not exactly true, but after learning the stats, I was introduced to the concept of offsetting.  Where I can donate money to plant trees to offset the CO2 emissions I create by traveling.  It’s kind of like the environmental equivalent of the give a penny take a penny.  Hopefully, more companies will become ISO 14001 compliant and the penny tray will overflow.

Erik Crawford, Web Marketing Manager