In the article entitled “Energy: understanding the barriers to change in business“, we identified the attitudes and catalysts within your company that determine whether your energy saving policy will fail or succeed. Here, myLIFE explains the concrete action you can take to implement the tools to facilitate change.
What to remember
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Aiming for energy-related behavioural change in a company is not an easy task. You have to learn to identify the barriers to the adoption of new virtuous behaviours, but you also have to pinpoint the problems specific to your company: the activity, the environment, the variety of groups of employees, the context of the change, etc.
There is no magic formula that can be replicated by all organisations. Different audiences, in different situations and at different times will require different types of interventions to effectively change their behaviour. The interventions you choose need to fit your business context and simply reproducing what others have done is less likely to be successful.
The interventions you choose need to fit your business context and simply reproducing what others have done is less likely to be successful.
The first step in developing your new energy policy is to identify the environmental problems specific to your organisation, as well as the means to be deployed to address them. These can be water use, energy, recycling, transport and fuel consumption, etc.
After identifying the levers for action, identify all the behaviours that will need to be changed and understand the context in which they occur. On this basis, you can define interventions that will take into account how organisational factors and individual behaviours interact. For example, there would be no point in encouraging employees to adjust the thermostat based on the temperature in the room if there is no system in place allowing staff to change it from the office. To successfully bring about a change, it must both be possible and desirable to facilitate it wherever possible.
The Nudge Unit (BIT) in the UK has created a framework that facilitates behaviour change in order to generate effective interventions to reduce your energy consumption. EAST stands for Easy, Attractive, Social and Timely. Without forgetting the importance of adapting each intervention to your situation, here are some examples to help fully understand each component of EAST.
Ultimately, it is the employees, at all levels of the organisation, who have the power to effect a change.
This last point reminds us that, ultimately, it is the employees, at all levels of the organisation, who most often have the power to effect a change. Consequently, while it is true that it is up to management to define and approve the general framework of a corporate energy policy, its implementation cannot simply be top-down or bottom-up. A collaborative approach is always favourable; do not hesitate to call on all employees to innovate and come up with ideas for effective intervention. This will make the expected changes much more attractive and will undoubtedly contribute towards a positive collective dynamic. Good luck!
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