Why video conferencing can boost a company’s green credentials
ClickGreen
8th October 2015
There are a lot of good reasons why your company should be looking to operate in as green a way as possible, and not all of them are connected to social responsibility.
Green issues are something the public as a whole care a lot about, and companies shown to disregard their importance (like Volkswagen recently) face judgement from consumers. By showing you take green issues seriously, you are going to win a lot of favour with your target audiences. Additionally, many things that help you operate in an environmentally friendly way also save you money; by using less energy and resources you are able to reduce your overheads very significantly.
One thing not all businesses realise is actually very good for improving a company’s green credentials, as well as yielding big savings, is instilling a culture where video and web conferencing is the default means of having meetings. Here is why this simple change can be so important:
Reducing Travel
There are times in business when you absolutely have to talk to people face to face, and the normal thing to do is arrange a meeting. This can sometimes involve people from all over the country or even the world, and this is how come we have such a culture of business travel. However, whether your attendees drive or fly, this travel contributes to pollution and the greenhouse effect, and it isn’t really necessary. If, instead of trying to assemble everybody in a room, you link up with a good service like ClickMeeting, you can have your meeting without any impact on the environment at all, and of course you all save on travel and time.
More Opportunities for Home Working
Home working is always a greener solution, as nobody has to commute and you use less energy, paper, ink and other resources in your office. However, if there are always meetings going on at your office that are essential for some team members, it can be very hard for them to ever actually find a day when they can work from home – there’s always at least one thing they need to turn up for (or a whole stream of them if they are somebody like a programme manager who needs to be involved in meetings for multiple projects). Using a good video conferencing solution is much better for them, as it gives them the flexibility to attend while still working from home.
Saving Paper
Even in offices that are largely paperless, people tend to print out a whole bunch of stuff to take to meetings with them and scribble on, or hand out to other attendees. Whilst tools like PaperCut can help to make people more aware of the need to save paper, with a good web conferencing solution things can be shared on screen and collaborated on right from the conferencing platform, so if you are all reviewing a document or looking at figures, there is no need for dozens of pages to be run off the printer every time.
Video conferencing is inexpensive and easy to implement, so why not look at where you can replace meetings with video conferences in your office culture?
One thing not all businesses realise is actually very good for improving a company’s green credentials, as well as yielding big savings, is instilling a culture where video and web conferencing is the default means of having meetings. Here is why this simple change can be so important:
Reducing Travel
There are times in business when you absolutely have to talk to people face to face, and the normal thing to do is arrange a meeting. This can sometimes involve people from all over the country or even the world, and this is how come we have such a culture of business travel. However, whether your attendees drive or fly, this travel contributes to pollution and the greenhouse effect, and it isn’t really necessary. If, instead of trying to assemble everybody in a room, you link up with a good service like ClickMeeting, you can have your meeting without any impact on the environment at all, and of course you all save on travel and time.
More Opportunities for Home Working
Home working is always a greener solution, as nobody has to commute and you use less energy, paper, ink and other resources in your office. However, if there are always meetings going on at your office that are essential for some team members, it can be very hard for them to ever actually find a day when they can work from home – there’s always at least one thing they need to turn up for (or a whole stream of them if they are somebody like a programme manager who needs to be involved in meetings for multiple projects). Using a good video conferencing solution is much better for them, as it gives them the flexibility to attend while still working from home.
Saving Paper
Even in offices that are largely paperless, people tend to print out a whole bunch of stuff to take to meetings with them and scribble on, or hand out to other attendees. Whilst tools like PaperCut can help to make people more aware of the need to save paper, with a good web conferencing solution things can be shared on screen and collaborated on right from the conferencing platform, so if you are all reviewing a document or looking at figures, there is no need for dozens of pages to be run off the printer every time.
Video conferencing is inexpensive and easy to implement, so why not look at where you can replace meetings with video conferences in your office culture?
