The Green Corridor: Work From Home – It’s as Green as Ever!

By Timothy Foote, Director, Transportation & Network APAC at Asendia

When I’ve had conversations with management on reducing carbon emissions, it usually centres on activities core to the businesses output, like the emissions caused during shipment delivery. But when companies calculate carbon emissions for their organisation, they are required to also factor in the emissions they make their employees generate. Managers quickly understand that international business trips for the company are part of their carbon footprint as an organisation. The same managers also need to recognise that getting to the office itself is also an emissions-generating activity.

Back in 2023 I wrote an article to show how much benefit our planet is gaining thanks to people simply working from home. Two years down the road this fact still remains. This is however only one of the benefits we have gained in the logistics industry from the ability to work from home.

I know from my personal working life that my own company gains immeasurably from employees that are working from home. We have amazing experts that are located in towns and cities far away from any physical office. Additionally, we have many very talented employees that due to their own health or family situations simply would not be able to work in the physical office. If our human resources department were to restrict employment to only those that will show up to work in an office, our talent pool and overall access to talent would harm the organisation’s ability to conduct business.

Maximising Emission and Cost Savings for Office Workers

Just centring on the emissions question, it is proven that allowing employees to work from home has great advantages for our planet. This is due to the reductions of energy used by employees to get to work as well as the lowering of energy needed to sustain an office (saving space, saving energy to cool or heat the space).

When we as individuals are going to and from work, we experience physically the emitting of greenhouse gases by our transportation sector. We can see the exhaust coming out of tailpipes from cars and trucks. We can hear the jet engines overhead. We can smell the pollution while walking near our busy roadways (sometimes covering our faces). We can touch it when wiping soot from our eyes and skin.

So what if everything was different? What if technology came into the picture that allowed for far less moving about in fossil fuel-burning transport? The recent pandemic offered a historic opportunity to see what a dramatic change in workspace cultures could have for our planet.

In my earlier article, I referenced a study on the impacts of work from home. A University of Warwick, U.K. study of two IT companies to moved 100% from WFO (work from office) to WFH (work from home) had a 97% reduction in purely commuting emissions.

Later studies also showed huge reductions in emissions. A Cornell University study which looked at the subject more holistically showed when the commuting reductions and the office running reductions are added together the overall impact showed a 54% savings in emissions.

The Cornell study was also looking at the then-recent blended/hybrid or flexible work arrangements where employees were allowed to work from home at least 2 to 4 days and found emissions savings from 11% to 29%.

Reducing the office size and seat management was also identified as a key way to save emissions. This was in addition to saving money for rent, utilities and maintenance. The study showed that, “Seat sharing among hybrid workers under full-building attendance can reduce carbon footprint by 28%” for office emissions.

To summarise then – for optimal office cost and emissions savings, organisations should adhere to the following:

1. Having staff work from home reduces carbon emissions significantly, so allow as much as possible.
2. There are cost savings when office space is reduced as a result of staff working remotely – organise and resize accordingly.
3. Further reduce emissions of your staff by providing them incentives to use public transportation for work and personal activities.

Actions for Frontline Staff

Of course in our industry, many jobs require people to be at their workplace. In the US for example, it was estimated that 57% of the workforce is considered as “frontline” meaning that they would need to commute a fairly significant amount, with little opportunity to use technology in order to work remotely.

In these situations, some interventions by companies that want to reduce commuter and business travel carbon emissions could be :

1. Continue to keep air business travel to a minimum and track it closely
2. Keep remote working as part of your business culture and continue to explore ways in which this could more widely implemented or adopted
3. Stagger work hours to help avoid having employees stuck in traffic congestion. This reduces emissions and unnecessary stress.
4. For sales staff that travel to clients – lease or rent electric transport instead of vehicles with internal combustion engines wherever possible either for your employees directly or for car services you are using
5. Incentivise public transport use amongst staff to reduce commuting emissions

I want to end this article on a historical note. Working in offices for set hours is not an activity that has been around for thousands of years. Only early industrialisation made set hours for work a standard for efficient manufacturing.

As manufacturing work uses less labour today, we can continue to reset what will be the working culture for our post-industrial workforces. Let’s make sure the reduction of emissions is primary to that culture.