AP

Picture: AP Photo/Alexander F. Yuan

All departments within a company can help minimise its carbon footprint.

This was one of the findings of the CRF Institute’s best employers certification index study, which found that if employees worked from home for one day a year, South Africa would save 4 366 tons of carbon dioxide and 119 079 litres of petrol.

“That’s good news for the economy and good news for the environment,” said Samantha Crous, country manager of the CRF Institute in South Africa.

The CRF Institute was founded as a joint initiative of academics, business journalists, trade associations, researchers and international publishers, with the objective of offering independent HR assessment, says the organisation on its website.

“The obvious benefits include health, happiness and increased productivity, because happy employees are more engaged employees,” said institute spokeswoman, Natasha Arendorf.

Crous said that local companies were starting to follow overseas trends. She said three years ago, the city of Houston, Texas, promoted flexitime to ease its notoriously congested commuting routes.

“The initial two-week trial was so successful that more than 200 companies immediately adopted the new system.”

A good local example, she said, was assurance, tax, transactions and advisory service company Ernst & Young.

People leader for Ernst & Young, Seshni Samuel, said that flexible working was so entrenched in company culture that employees did not even have permanent desks.

“Instead, the organisation provides each employee with a laptop and 3G wireless modem, which allows them to work from just about anywhere.”

Global management consulting, technology service and outsourcing company Accenture, said Arendorf, was also in the process of piloting a three-day office week in some of their departments in their South African offices, allowing employees two days a week to work from home.

Crous explained that benefits such as job-sharing, compressed working hours, flexitime, part-time working, telecommuting and time off in lieu of overtime are some of the methods HR officers can use to become more planet-focused.

Another area of huge potential impact, said Crous, was the eco-modernisation of office buildings.

“For companies of all sizes, there are the increasingly common practices of recycling and reducing paper wastage through access-controlled printer codes.”

And, with campaigns recognising big business’s role in saving the environment, the motivation to “go green” is more relevant than ever before.

One of them, the Green Heart award initiative allows employees to nominate colleagues who are role models in workplaces and who have made a significant contribution to going green by finding creative ways to improve the environmental footprint of their department, office or building.

Green Office Week was another initiative targeted at raising awareness of sustainability and greener office practices.