How to engage your staff with smart meters: the report
5th October 2017
Engaging your team with smart meters is not only a good way to educate them about the roll-out that’s sweeping the nation, but it will also instil the values of good energy management – a bonus for any business owner that wants to keep an eye on their energy consumption.
Smart Energy GB – the organisation behind the smart-meter rollout campaign – has teamed up with the Carbon Trust to produce “The Employers’ Guide to Smart Meters and Energy Efficiency Awareness at Work and at Home”, a report offering suggestions on raising awareness about energy efficiency and the benefits of smart meters.
These practical takeaways can be utilised in almost any business – and could certainly help cut down costs when you consider that 80% of people with smart meters have taken at least one step to reduce energy use.
Put somebody in charge of managing energy consumption
If any of your employees deal with your business’ facilities issues, then they’ll need to be clued up when it comes to smart meters. If there isn’t anyone obvious to oversee and spread the word, why not appoint someone?
It’s now reasonably common for companies to have an ‘energy champion’, much like you would have a designated first aider or fire warden. By appointing a team member, you increase accountability by making it someone’s direct responsibility to be aware of the important issues. Plus, the message may become better integrated in the workforce if it comes from employees’ direct team members rather than a manager.
Promote social responsibility in your business
Businesses with strong CSR programmes, particularly those that align with their employees’ personal views, tend to reap the benefits.
According to research cited within the report, “employees who are satisfied with their organisation’s commitment to social and environmental responsibility are likely to be more positive, more engaged and more productive than those working for less responsible employers.”
Through the act of getting a smart meter installed, you can open discussion about energy awareness and sustainability – making it known the part your company plays in trying to be a sustainable, ethical business.
Visualise your energy usage
For many domestic customers, just seeing the pounds and pence you’re saving is motivation enough. But for employees who aren’t responsible for paying the energy bill at business, it’s a little harder to translate.
By providing a visual aid – an adjustable barometer, for example, that can indicate a high or low day of energy usage – the meaning can be communicated better to a workforce. At De Montfort University, an animated display that showed positive images during low energy consumption and negative images during high consumption periods (in this case, a happy or sad cartoon gorilla) was found to have a notable effect on building users’ behaviour.
For the full report with more tips and advice, you can download and read it here. There are also a number of other resources available for employers on the Smart Energy GB website. These come in a range of formats and can help to communicate to your employees the importance of energy efficiency and smart meter awareness.