When it comes to committing to energy efficiency in your business, it’s important to have buy-in from your whole team. For many of us, we can’t make the changes on our own—it will take the commitment and help of everyone in your office or facility. So, what can you do to get your team on board and ready to make changes to be more energy efficient? We have a few ideas for incentivizing the process and building support (and hopefully enthusiasm) for the projects.
- Set up an internal contest among teams in your office. Create small teams that would compete head to head to save the most energy. There’s a number of ways to set up this type of competition, but here’s a great handbook with ideas and step by step instructions put out by EnergyStar and the EPA. Don’t forget to have prizes for the winners!
- Expand your efforts beyond the office. If your team is committed to energy efficiency for the right reasons (the ones beyond your bottom line), they’ll want to see efforts that push beyond the office walls. This could include things like incentives for carpooling, biking, or walking to work. Encourage your team to make changes and give them the resources they need to do so (lockers, showers, bike racks, etc). Here are a few ideas from MI Commute to help you get started!
- Give opportunities for feedback and ideas. This could be customized to your group, but we love the idea of doing an office version of show and tell. Make the challenge open, like “How can our office be greener?” or solve a more specific issue: “How can we lower our energy use?” Give them the opportunity to make it creative with posters, dioramas, characters, or something else funny or hokey. See what your team can come up with and vote on the best ideas, then implement the ones that are the most realistic/impactful. Don’t forget the prizes!
- Use visuals to show how the business/teams/individuals are progressing. People like to see results, so show them how much you’ve saved as a group. Or, use individual metrics and offer ways for them to “show off” their achievements. A Michigan development company, Gravity Works, has “badges” for different individual accomplishments that work kind of like merit badges. You could implement something similar to keep things exciting. Oh, and of course, prizes!
We know this could be a lot to get organized and implemented, so that’s why we have one more bonus idea for you!
5. Create a Green Team of interested and invested staff. This group can then be tasked with getting the competitions and other stuff together. There are a couple of reasons to do it like this: 1) other staff will likely be more enthusiastic and accepting if the ideas are coming from peers rather than from the top down and 2) it helps foster authentic buy-in from your staff. We’d be willing to bet you have a handful of enthusiastic team members who’d be interested in taking the lead on this project.
We hope you find some ideas here for getting your team on board with making energy changes in your business. Be sure to check our site for other ideas and resources.
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