Looking for new and innovative ways to green your workplace? The Cool Choices online sustainability game can help; our game and engagement platform collects great ideas from employees on greening the workplace and builds a buzz about sustainability at your organization.
For example, a 30-point card prompts, “Suggest a new way to save energy at work.”
This is a simple and effective way to get employee engagement—and input specific to your organization—around sustainable changes that can be implemented. In just a few minutes a day, Cool Choices makes sustainability and energy-saving measures top of mind for your employees and delivers concrete energy and cost-saving strategies. Our clients receive an End-of-Game Report (including a compilation of employee suggestions) as part of their Cool Choices implementation.
Curious about the kinds of suggestions Cool Choices participants make?
Our clients see three kinds of ideas, each providing a different engagement opportunity:
1. Hidden Opportunities for Savings
In many cases participants identify very specific savings opportunities that were not visible to sustainability leaders. In our work with a regional healthcare network, for example, a small rural clinic had developed an innovative recycling strategy; when a participant shared the idea via Cool Choices the organization’s leadership was able to replicate it in other locations. In many cases front line staff have the clearest view on where resources are being wasted; soliciting their ideas can accelerate efficiencies.
2. Support for New Organization-level Protocols
Participants often suggest practical organization-wide changes that will reduce overall resource use. In many games participants identify a number of strategies for reducing fleet costs—like new protocols for carpooling and vehicle selection. Often these ideas are not new; typically both sustainability and accounting staff had identified most of the savings opportunities previously. Leaders didn’t pursue the ideas, though, due to concerns about staff acceptance. By providing bottom-up momentum—ideas about how the organization can live its commitment to sustainability, coming from everyone across the organization versus just another cost saving idea from the folks in accounting—the Cool Choices program provided an opportunity to talk about and implement these ideas.
3. Audacious Goals
Some participants will suggest dramatic changes that are seem well beyond an organization’s current goals—like installing sufficient solar panels to power an entire factory. Within the game these suggestions provide a unique two-way opportunity for dialogue and education. Helping staff understand, for example, the number of panels required to power an industrial operation can increase staff appreciation for the value of energy efficiency. At the same time, leaders gain insights from the kinds of audacious goals participants suggest—knowing that staff support audacious goals can nudge leaders to think bigger as they update organization-wide sustainability goals.
If you’d like to engage your employees in innovative approaches to accelerate your organization’s sustainability efforts, please contact us.
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