action’ so we can take advantage of the interest that staff may have developed in their own time. For example, in June–August we have the transport theme. It links with Bike to Work day in June. ■
Patience is a virtue Manage expectations and recognise that larger organisations take time to change. Senior managers as well as staff need to know why it takes time. The 10:10 challenge is the UK’s 2010 campaign for businesses to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 10 per cent, a challenge that larger organisations will find hard to achieve whether they are novices to reducing their environment impact or well along the path. You have to identify the Environment Agency Building Energy Usage
sources, have a robust baseline, investigate options and work within the lead in times for policy changes and kit installations as well as change behaviour. The graph below demonstrates the level of reduction we have been able to make in our buildings energy use (KWh) over the last five years – steady but also able to be maintained.
Getting staff to work for you The science behind behaviour change states that staff need to be both willing to act but also to have the ability to act. Any attempts to change behaviour needs both of these if the change is to work. We have chosen not to over-complicate our challenge by working with psychological categorisations but it is useful to understand some basics about what motivates people. People tend to fall into three categories that describe our willingness to act and motivate our behaviour: ■ ■
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pioneers – they tend to be good at seeing the bigger picture and are likely to take action because they believe it is the ‘right thing to do’. prospectors – esteem driven, they care about what others think of them. Taking action on climate change needs to be seen as ‘cool’ to appeal to this group.
Going Green: