Looking for new ways to reduce costs? (OK, who isn’t?)
The secret may be as simple as asking employees.
A couple of years back, AT&T announced that it saved $44 million by adopting energy-saving ideas through its sustainability program.
The company challenged employees to come up with ideas for reducing usage across the board.
And boy did the employees came through. When all was said and done, AT&T had a master list of 4,200 projects (most of them small ones) to cut electricity bills.
The momentum’s there
Now AT&T is targeting bigger savings by revamping how it uses traditional energy.
Its goals are to reduce:
• energy demand by 80% by making lighting upgrades
• electricity intensity for most of its systems by 16.6%, and
• gasoline and diesel purchases by 1 million gallons through using vehicles that run on compressed natural gas.
Never hurts to ask
How you ask employees for their help is important. Using a variety of outreaches can get high impact:
• either one-on-one or in departmental meetings
• bulletin boards, and
• email or Intranet surveys.