News & Blog Posts

It is September 2022. We feel your pain and therefore we have noted a couple of tips on how to become more energy efficient in the office.

1. Know how much energy you are using.

Always remember to take monthly meter readings or have these gathered for you by your building manager. It is hard to know how to save when you don’t know how much you are using and what you may be wasting it on.

2. Install, where possible, energy efficient office lighting.

Apparently, 40% of the energy businesses use go on the lighting in their premises. It is an initial outlay in costs however replacing incandescent filament bulbs with modern LEDs, CFL or halogens will save your business a lot of energy and often last much longer. In addition to this, installing motion sensor switches so that the lights aren’t left on for longer than needed (or even overnight!) would be an instant saving.

3. Drop the heat.

Yes, we are about to hit the winter months but even turning down the heating by 1 or 2 degrees can decrease the cost of energy.

If you have VRV heating and cooling systems installed, make sure that these are regularly maintained, and the filters have been cleaned so that the units don’t have to work as hard.

If you have desks or filing cabinets pushed up against radiators, then look at moving these so that the heat isn’t wasted on warming your furniture.

4. Find the OFF switch.

We are sure we aren’t alone when we say that laptops or computers aren’t turned off every night, but this is costing you! Encourage your staff to turn off their computers instead of using the standby mode and pay special attention to switches and plugs. Ask yourself, are there any electrical items that you don’t use every day? If so, switch it off!

5. It is teamwork.

It isn’t just down to one person, or the office manager, to make sure that savings are being made. Encourage the whole team so that they know that everyone plays a part in this. Allow them to understand that savings need to be made in the office and not just at home. Some ideas could be;

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• - Utilise the notice boards so that staff are mindful and why it is important
• - Routine meetings to share progress and to exchange new ideas
• - Encourage staff to dress appropriately, especially in winter. Put a jumper on instead of cranking the heating up (we all know the arguments that the heating controls can cause!).

6. Go paperless.

Be as paperless as possible and avoid having the printer on all the time, even on standby overnight. You can encourage less paper waste by using online signing services and sharing through online collaborations.

That is just a few of our tips that you can try straight away but it may be worthwhile looking into an energy audit to see if there are extra ways to save. We have put these tips together with an office environment in mind but many of them still stand in various business that are operating.