CloudApps Warns Of Ignorance Over Sustainability Savings

Most managers are still sleep-walking when it comes to potential sustainability savings identified by staff, according to CloudApps, which has developed software to measure the carbon footprint of individual PCs.

CloudApps is a relatively new company that touts itself as Europe’s first enterprise application vendor focused on climate change regulatory compliance and the management of carbon as a business asset. It essentially develops systems so that businesses can use to track, monitor and report on their carbon footprints.

The CloudApps desktop tool is social media-type software that can be installed on the PC desktop of staff to measure their individual carbon footprint and suggest waste and energy reductions. It apparently integrates best practices into everyday work schedules and works a little like Twitter, so staff can contribute cost savings ideas using a constantly updating a desktop-resident assistant.

Sustainability Survey

CloudApps also revealed the findings of a survey into staff attitudes and engagement in corporate sustainability.

It found, for example, that 50 percent of staff see opportunities to reduce unnecessary cost and waste on a daily basis, but only a third are ever asked to contribute to its reduction. And to make matters worse, nearly half (48 percent) said they had not participated in any sustainability projects in the last year, despite rising energy and waste disposal costs.

The survey also found that 13 percent of organisations were exposed as having publicly stated sustainability targets, that they do not report against.

And it seems that most staff recognise the importance of sustainability and how not doing anything can impact the business. 94 percent said it is  important for their organisation to be the market leader in sustainability.

Staff Walkout?

Surprisingly, the lack of management concern is provoking a strong reaction in the workforce, after the survey found that nearly half (44 percent) of respondents said they would even consider changing jobs if they felt that their organisation was not operating in a sustainable fashion.

Time was cited as the main reason for not adopting properly enforced sustainability initiatives.

“The study results detail a shocking void between what organisations say and what they do,” said Simon Wheeldon, CEO at CloudApps. “Sustainability is clearly important to employees, who want to contribute their experience and knowledge towards corporate sustainability goals. Nearly half at least claim they will ‘vote with their feet’ and this threat will become more real as the economy recovers.

“Our customers are reporting an average of 10 percent cost savings from energy and waste costs, but are finding you cannot top-slice these efficiencies, they need to come from the bottom-up, right across the business,” Wheeldon said. “Employees are screaming out at business leaders to take action. It is something employees clearly want to do and installing CloudApps provides a clear message that management is ‘walking the walk’ on sustainability.”

The CloudApps warning comes after green specialists Verdantix warned that the old Green IT movement was a fad, which was killed off by the 2009 receession.

However, it pointed out that a new sustainability movement has emerged, backed by offerings from large service providers, which take in technologies beyond IT-centric issues such as data centre efficiency and turning off PCs.