Transport is a big issue. For organisations the cost of business travel is always under scrutiny, and for society as a whole it has an even greater degree of importance, because how often and how far we travel has a major impact on carbon emissions and climate change.
According to the European Environmental Agency1, between 1985 and 2000, carbon emissions in Europe from transport grew by a massive 40%. It also estimated that they'll grow by a further 30% by 2010, making transport the biggest single contributor to EU greenhouse gas emissions.
Obviously, climate change affects us all - companies as well as individuals. However, for many organisations, there's also increased pressure from clients and customers to improve their environmental record, with environmental audits becoming an increasingly common part of larger contracts. This means that, no matter what size your organisation is, looking to improve the management of your environmental impact can only help your business. And, in many cases, there are cost benefits too.
Travel costs
With the impact of travel high on the agenda, it's clear that this is one key area that you should concentrate on. If you're considering a strategy to cut your travel-related emissions, there are two areas you need to look at. The first is simply reducing the amount of business-related travel for meetings, especially abroad. There will always be a place and need for face-to-face meetings, but for many occasions, a voice or video conference may be a better option.
However, there's a second part to business-related travel that often slips off the radar; your employees’ travel to and from the office. Thanks to ever increasing house prices, the average commute is getting longer. Research in 2006 by the University of Western England2 found that the number of people commuting more than 50km to work had increased by 30% between 1990 and 2001 - and the average commuter now spends 139 hours per year travelling to and from work.
The answer is obviously either shorter commutes - something which it's hard for a company to affect - or less commuting. But this means that you need an effective system for remote working, one which allows your employees to stay at home while having access to everything they need from the office, including any file systems, email, and phones.
Remote solutions
Obviously, if your workers are going to connect to the office from home, they need a fast and reliable network connection, which nowadays means broadband. It gives you access to email and, using remote access solutions, to your business network and files, if required. You'll also need to look at how you provide voice calls. You could simply ask workers to use their home phone, but this would probably mean that you'd need to reimburse them for business calls. This adds an extra level of complexity as you'll need to handle them through your expenses system - meaning extra administrative overhead for you.
There are a wide variety of solutions available that cover both voice and data access for home workers. For data products, current business broadband products can provide the speed and reliability that go beyond standard consumer offerings. For example, Demon Business 8000 provides up to 8Mbps download speeds as well as a fixed IP address and traffic prioritisation during busy periods. The service also includes a fax-to-email facility as well as a dial-up back up, in case, for any reason, the broadband service is not accessible.
Save on voice calls
New-wave Voice over IP (VoIP) solutions, such as Demon Voice over Broadband (VoB), can provide a straightforward business-grade Internet telephony service for home workers. VoIP services come with the added advantage that calls made to and from other users of that service are free. With Demon VoB, each user is assigned a location-independent telephone number that can be used anywhere the user has access to a broadband connection, whether at home or in the office. In addition, calls to traditional landlines and international destinations are less expensive than those charged by fixed-line telephone operators.
The final piece of the jigsaw is to make sure workers still have access to collaborative tools. Products like Demon Voice Conferencing allow employees working at home to attend meetings in the office, without actually being there. Demon Voice Conferencing ‘rooms’ are available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, which means they can also be used to facilitate meetings which bring in people from different time zones with ease.
Committing to a flexible working system which allows people to work at home regularly doesn't need to cost the Earth - in fact, as we've seen, it can even help to save it too. Your employees will like it, your customers will like it - and so will the planet.
1 Are we moving in the right direction? Indicators on transport and environment integration in the EU, European Environmental Agency, Copenhagen, 20 July 2000.
2 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/5245860.stm