O2 Reduces Carbon Emissions In Flexible Working Pilot

O2 says that its flexible working initiative reduced its CO2 equivalent emissions by 12.2 tonnes and saved its employees around 2,000 hours of commuting time.

The mobile operator made the claim while announcing the results of the scheme held in February, designed to test the company’s measures to cope with the expected travel chaos brought about by this summer’s Olympic Games.

Environmental Benefits

The entire workforce at O2’s Slough HQ was asked to work from home on 8 February this year, with 2,500 employees working remotely on the day. Just 125 mission critical staff worked at the office, although one member of staff turned up for work despite the weeks of notice he was given about the scheme.

According to the results, the reductions in emissions were equivalent to driving 42,000 miles in a medium-sized diesel car, while 2,000 hours of commuting time were saved, cutting emissions that would have been created from travelling in on trains, buses and cars.

Water usage decreased by 53 percent, but electricity consumption was reduced by just 12 percent and gas usage actually increased. O2 attributed this to the fact that there was less body heat in the building and acknowledged that the sustainability issue around flexible working may not be as straightforward as first thought.

The pilot also aimed to see if O2’s technology could handle the task of supporting a remote workforce. To accommodate the anticipated increase in use, O2 upgraded its Virtual Private Network (VPN) and network infrastructure, while also making provisions to split traffic between servers in the north and south of the office to ensure the load was spread efficiently.

Technical Success

The reported number of maximum VPN users was 1,990, or 80 percent of the Slough workforce, an increase in users of 155 percent. The volume of VPN data increased by around 110 percent, but the network remained stable and the IT desk reported no significant changes in the number of calls it had to deal with.

“Thanks to this rigorous planning, the experiment was an astonishing success – not just in terms of the productivity of the workforce, but as a demonstration of the power of flexible working to forge lasting operational, cultural and environmental change within modern organisations,” commented Ben Dowd, business director for O2.

O2 hopes that the scheme will showcase the wider economic case for flexible working as well as the benefits to the environment, with the operator setting a target of saving more than 500,000 miles of travel and 160,000 tonnes or carbon emissions.

Earlier this year, civil servants also tested their ability to work from home during the Olympics as part of operation Stepchange, which commentators predicted would show other businesses how to carry out flexible working arrangements.

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