Games

We love when clients return to implement the Cool Choices game-based sustainability program for a second or even third time. We’re delighted to partner again with Inpro, a leader in the manufacturing industry with a truly remarkable commitment to environmental sustainability.

Inpro first enlisted Cool Choices to deliver an 8-week game-based sustainability program in 2014. More than 50% of Inpro’s employees participated in the Cool Choices game and reported actions representing almost $200,000 in annual savings!

Amanda Goetsch, Sustainability Manager at Inpro, explained, “Sustainability, in part, is about having fun while creating a more resilient and vibrant future for all stakeholders. Playing the Cool Choices game helped our employees integrate healthy and uplifting habits into their lives, while at the same time adding a little padding to their pocketbooks. Cool Choices is a tool that helps us increasingly integrate sustainability into our corporate culture and our employees love it!”

Taking part in the Cool Choices program, Michael R. Sekula, Global Vice President of Supply Chain Management & Safety at Inpro shared, “If you are struggling with engaging your staff around sustainability, Cool Choices is your tool. It’s fun, engaging and I believe both the company and the employee learn a great deal from the program.”

This month Inpro is launching their second partnership with Cool Choices. Employees at Inpro will form teams and compete daily to report their sustainable actions. Participants will earn points and win prizes for reporting actions that reduce resource consumption and help the environment. The Cool Choices team would like to welcome Inpro employees for a second time! We’re excited to see the impact you’ll make during your second company-wide Cool Choices sustainability game.

Contact us to learn more about how we can help you address your corporate sustainability goals.

See Cool Choices in action at Outpost Natural Foods, a natural foods grocery co-op with six locations in Wisconsin! Watch Now

Learn more about how the Cool Choices program was implemented at Outpost Natural Foods.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization?
Contact us for more information.

Team “Seventhwave Wavemakers” of Seventhwave organized their own e-waste drive during their game of Cool Choices.

In a game of Cool Choices, new actions are released every day. Players compete as teams to see who can take the greatest number of sustainable actions such as biking to work, turning off the lights when leaving a room, choosing a meatless meal and recycling.

Over and over, we see teams and players get inspired during the game to take on a project that goes beyond the actions in the game.

For example, a Cool Choices team recently decided to organize their own e-waste drive. This was not something we suggested they do to earn points. The team had an idea while playing Cool Choices so they took on this larger project. Cool Choices, a game that takes minutes to play, brought this team together, got them talking and inspired a whole new initiative.

A culture that embraces sustainability is contagious. It feels good to see people around you who want to do their part, big or small. If we can make sustainability visible, we’ll inspire a ripple effect where your actions inspire mine and mine inspire someone else’s. The growing momentum creates and reinforces a sense of efficacy. The more of us the better; like the team of people pictured, let’s take sustainability beyond the game, into our homes, workplaces, consumer choices and communities.

Together, we CAN embrace (and enjoy) being more sustainable. Together, with some innovation and inspiration, we can address climate change.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

Outpost Natural Foods, a natural foods grocery co-op with six locations in Wisconsin, will kick off their game of Cool Choices in February 2016. Employees at Outpost will form teams and compete daily for 6 weeks in the Cool Choices online sustainability game. The game and engagement platform lets participants earn points and win prizes for reporting actions that reduce resource consumption and help the environment.

Outpost demonstrates a deep commitment to environment responsibility and this commitment shows up in both large and small endeavors. For example, Outpost uses ecofriendly packaging, composts 100% of the scrap food from all locations, including their production kitchen, and has solar panels, rainwater catchment, onsite food production and rain gardens at their Mequon, WI location. Additionally, Outpost is currently 25^th on the EPA’s Top 30 Retail list for their green power use within the Green Power Partnership program.

The Cool Choices team would like to welcome Outpost Natural Foods employees! We can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make during your game of Cool Choices.

“Outpost Natural Foods has had many successes in terms of environmental and social responsibility. The Cool Choices game-based approach offers us a new and fun way to engage our employees around sustainability. The game also tracks and measure financial savings, carbon reduction and engagement results, so we’re looking forward to sharing the impacts our employee teams will create,” said Jessy Servi Ortiz, Sustainability Manager, Outpost Natural Foods.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

The Cool Choices online sustainability game draws from a variety of social sciences to inspire and create behavior change, cut costs and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Cool Choices staff are long-time presenters and participants at the Behavior, Energy and Climate Change (BECC) conference. This event brings together an eclectic group of researchers, practitioners and advocates focused on environmentally sustainable behaviors. We were excited to represent our approach to game-based behavior change at the conference this year.

The 2015 BECC conference provided some terrific insights. For example, a recurring theme at BECC is the power of local. This year several presenters shared research showing that people are more responsive to messages with a local slant—it turns out that a locally-recognizable skyline in a Facebook post will increase clicks.

At Cool Choices we’re acutely aware that local is relevant and that it motivates—it’s why we implement our game and engagement platform within specific communities (within a business, across a city, or as part of an energy efficiency program). The Cool Choices game builds upon on our players’ sense of community, showing them that others in their community are adopting sustainable practices and that, cumulatively, those practices add up to significant impacts. So, just how do we “show” local actions and values in terms of sustainability within an online game environment?

• Social stream: An active social stream within the game platform lets players post photos of their sustainable actions, share sustainability tips or projects, and leave comments on and “cool” the posts of others in their community.
• Teams and Leaderboard: Cool Choices is a team game. Players often tell us they play, and keep playing, because they don’t want to let their team down. Players can check their team or individual standings within their community on the leaderboard.
• Cumulative Data: Players can see the estimated cost savings generated from their community’s efforts. This number builds with each day of game play. At the end of a game each client also receives an impact report.

Learn more about how Cool Choices makes sustainability visible.

Changing behaviors is hard, so for practitioners like us, the annual BECC conference is also an opportunity to trade strategies—to share what’s working, to commiserate about the challenges, and to remember that we’re not alone in this quest. Being part of a community of people who are promoting sustainable practices is powerful. Just as the Cool Choices sustainability game shows that people’s small actions add up, BECC reminds us that our efforts are part of a growing international movement to address climate change. Being part of a community feels good.

In addition to attending conference sessions; Cool Choices led a post-conference workshop on using games as a behavior change strategy, “Want Change? Make it a Game!”, shared our efforts to grow our game into a movement in a conference session, and a presented a poster on how games allow colleagues to coach one another on sustainability.

Curious about how Cool Choices can help your organization save money and get sustainable? Contact us and we’ll get back to you with more information.

Did you know entire communities are playing Cool Choices to mobilize around sustainability initiatives?

Recently, Green Madi­son launched a city-wide game of Cool Choices in Madison, Wisconsin. Residents and employ­ees from more than 40 Madi­son busi­nesses and orga­ni­za­tions such as UW Health, Amer­i­can Fam­ily Insur­ance, MG&E, TDS Tele­com, and the Greater Madi­son Cham­ber of Com­merce are tak­ing part. The Cool Choices game cal­cu­lates car­bon and energy sav­ings as play­ers log their sus­tain­able actions on a daily basis.

Everyone’s efforts in the city-wide Cool Choices game count toward Madison’s entry in the George­town Uni­ver­sity Energy competition.

“Madi­son has a secret weapon in the nation-wide Energy Prize: A game-based-impact approach that inspires and unites every Madis­on­ian around sus­tain­abil­ity! Cool Choices has demon­strated results, and will let res­i­dents and employ­ees from busi­nesses large and small com­mu­ni­cate with each other on how to improve our city,” said Dan White, CEO at Fil­a­ment Games.

The “social stream” within the game plat­form pro­motes aware­ness of addi­tional Green Madi­son ini­tia­tives designed to help Madi­son res­i­dents save money.

“Employ­ees at Reynolds Trans­fer & Stor­age are tak­ing part in the city-wide game of Cool Choices because we see this as an easy and fun way to be more green and to help Madi­son reduce our energy use as we com­pete for the George­town Uni­ver­sity Energy Prize” said Ben­jamin Reynolds, Direc­tor of Oper­a­tions at Reynolds Trans­fer & Stor­age. “We hope even more busi­nesses and Madi­son residents will join in and take part.”

A 2014 survey indicated that 83 percent of workers planned to look for a new job. These employees said that they were exploring their options because they wanted more pay, more opportunities for advancement and more recognition.

The same survey showed that worker unhappiness was down dramatically from the previous year.

Employees don’t feel unhappy, they feel undervalued. Pay, advancement and recognition are all measures of worth.

In thinking about how to respond to these findings I refer the reader to a few of my favorite sources: Daniel Pink’s Drive and Dan Ariely’s Predictably Irrational. We are not very good at understanding our own behaviors or at predicting what will make us happy—and money is not the motivator we tend to think it is. When it comes to conveying that we value someone, context is critically important. In short, it is likely that some employers will read about this survey and respond in a well-intentioned way that reinforces the employee’s urge to leave.

Here at Cool Choices we think a lot about employee engagement—about what makes people feel like a valued part of a workplace community. We see constant evidence that recognition—from peers as well as supervisors—matters a lot. Our partners often marvel at the impact little things—like an email from the boss or a photo on the company intranet—can have on employee morale.

What are you doing to ensure your employees are engaged and feel valued?

Are you comfortable providing direction to your peers?

According to a recent study, most of us are not—the lack of hierarchy makes it awkward for us to nudge a colleague when they are not following protocols.

This is a big deal. We know people are deeply influenced by the behaviors of others and this study tells us that it’s typically uncomfortable to influence peer behaviors. That means there’s enormous opportunity for unsustainable practices to spread across our organizations.

Envision a scenario where Joe leaves equipment running even though the office policy is to shut off equipment at the end of the day. Bill is unlikely to correct Joe because, well Bill’s not Joe’s boss so, really, it’s none of his business. And besides, Joe brings in home-made muffins sometimes and Bill likes muffins. So the equipment stays on, which ultimately affects Amy and Mike’s behaviors too; they see that others leave the equipment on so they do the same. The office policy is largely irrelevant in the face of increasingly pervasive social norms.

Cool Choices game shakes up this dynamic. Games give people permission to coach other players (especially team mates). Within the context of a game Bill will likely tell Joe to shut off the printer—because leaving it on is killing their team standing. And, instead of withholding muffins, Joe will probably laugh at Mike’s team spirit but he’ll also turn off the equipment. And the interaction might prompt Joe to coach Amy “hey, you’d better shut off the copier; Mike’s determined that we’re winning this game.”

We see this all the time. Playing a game gives people permission to coach, to talk to colleagues about their practices. And, because the conversations are within a game setting, the interactions feel appropriate to all parties. Ultimately Cool Choices inspires people to talk to each other—directly—about sustainable practices within their community. And those conversations lead to amazing results.

We talk a lot about the importance of social norms—that people are influenced by the actions of their peers. The power of norms isn’t limited to individuals—businesses also strive to look good compared to their competition. That is why businesses tout the awards they win for quality, customer service and, yes, even energy efficiency.

ENERGY STAR Portfolio Manager facilitates business comparisons of energy use in buildings. Offered through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the free software enables property managers and owners to see how their properties stack up against similar types of buildings. Stakeholders can also use the software to earn ENERGY STAR certification for the most efficient buildings.

Because we know comparisons matter, Cool Choices was pleased to partner with the Great Plains Institute (GPI) and the Wisconsin Sustainable Business Council (WSBC) on a report characterizing ENERGY STAR certified buildings in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin ENERGY STAR report, “Leaders in Efficiency: ENERGY STAR Buildings in Wisconsin,” details the types of ENERGY STAR buildings certified (schools dominate), the cities with the most buildings and other fun facts—including a photo of one ENERGY STAR certified building in Wisconsin that was built in 1857.

Buildings that earn the ENERGY STAR certification are more energy efficient than 75 percent of similar buildings around the country and use, on average, 35 percent less energy. Buildings that get recertified annually are on average even more efficient.

ENERGY STAR certified buildings in Wisconsin represent nearly 72 million square feet of floor space in the state. Publicizing Wisconsin successes and showcasing leaders in ENERGY STAR certification—can inspire other building owners and managers to use ENERGY STAR portfolio manager to benchmark their buildings. More benchmarking leads to more ENERGY STAR certifications, reducing energy costs and increasing resource efficiency—which is a win for everyone.

Cool Choices’ success is built on the simple idea that sustainability is driven by communities; that people who share a common goal to reduce waste and help the environment will work together to achieve great things. Our friends at West Liberty Foods have together already made 700 Cool Choices this week–the first week of their Cool Choices game. Participation across the facility has already surpassed previous employee engagement programs by 50%!

Troy and Liza (pictured below) started things off making a few Cool crafts together to invite co-workers across their three facilities to play. This, friends, is what community looks like.