Good Work Environment

The Age

While more than 90 per cent of workers think their offices could be doing more for the environment, enthusiasm wanes when asked if they would commit to out-of-office hours environmental initiatives supported by their workplace.

Nearly 46 per cent said 'maybe' to off-work initiatives, just under 11 per cent gave an outright no and 43 per cent agreed.

The survey by reward and recognition consultancy RedBalloon Corporate covered 1778 employees across the country in small, medium and large businesses. Large businesses had 150 or more employees, small businesses had fewer than 25 employees and medium businesses had between 25 – 149 employees.

The survey sought to discover "attitudes towards workplace responsibility in the face of heightened environmental speculation".

It found most workplaces – 89 per cent – had a recycling scheme, 58 per cent had implemented energy saving and 44 per cent had introduced water-saving measures.

Nearly 14 per cent had initiated carbon offsetting, about 29 per cent had sponsored an environmental charity and 27 per cent had encouraged staff to volunteer for environmental causes. More than 4 per cent of the companies did all of the above and 6.5 per cent of them did 'nothing'.

Respondents were split almost evenly when asked whether the environmental initiatives in their offices were "simply piecemeal rather than a sustained commitment".

Naomi Simson, the founder of RedBalloon, says employees were clearly committed to helping the environment.

"Encouragingly the results show that most workplaces are taking heed of the environmental message. However, some employees think there is a lot more that could be done," she says.

Date: 23/06/2007