Survey: Greenies Go for Conferencing
In a recent survey where individuals were asked what their companies are doing to reduce carbon footprints, the top response was providing conferencing tools to cut back on travel (66 percent). The poll of more than 900 workers, released by InterCall, investigated the steps companies are taking to increase environmentally friendly practices.
"Businesses are an important group to target with green issues," said Carolyn Campbell, senior director of marketing for InterCall. "Avoiding travel by using conferencing is a change businesses can make that is immediate and easy to implement. They can easily reduce their footprint without expensive changes to their product or processes ... it's simply a change in behavior."
Just how involved are the employees in their companies' quest to be green? The survey found:
• To collaborate with remote teams while cutting down on travel, the main technologies used are phone conference calls (76 percent), Web conferences (63 percent) and video conferences (50 percent), which significantly cut down on business trips.
• Seventy-one percent of survey respondents said their companies enable employees to telecommute on a full- or part-time basis. Of those supporting telecommuting, 25 percent say their companies actively encourage the practice.
• With conferencing tools being utilized more, 72 percent of people said that they take zero to three business trips per year that require flying.
• A mere 5 percent of respondents said their companies are doing nothing to address their environmental footprint.
When it comes to awareness of green issues overall, only 31 percent of employees know their company's carbon footprint and another 31 percent reported that their company is planning to complete a carbon footprinting project within the next year.
The InterCall survey, which was administered in January 2008 at http://www.greenconferencing.com, generated more than 900 responses from workers across the country.