One of the most effective ways to reduce carbon emissions is to reduce unnecessary travel. On average, Tandberg customers find that telepresence and videoconferencing reduce the need to travel by up to 30%, while improving their bottom line.
It's not just telepresence and videoconferencing vendors touting the environmental benefits of this technology. The Nature Conservancy lists videoconferencing as one of its 'Easy Things You Can Do To Help Our Climate'.
The following are 10 tips to reduce environmental impacts with telepresence and videoconferencing.
- Telecommuting — Enable people to work from home while still being fully engaged in the workplace. Save on real estate and operational costs, while increasing productivity and morale of employees who don't spend hours in traffic.
- Access to remote experts — Connecting customers and employees to experts and advisors face to face no matter where they are located through video communications saves time, money and carbon emissions, and increases customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- Global meetings — Whether meeting with the board or your global team, there's no need for everyone to take a long flight. Just a short walk down the hall or a quick call from the desk and everyone can meet face to face without the carbon emissions.
- Customer briefing centres — Video communication unites purchasers, clients, sales staff and engineers in real time without travel to facilitate instant decision making and collaboration, reducing the negative environmental impacts from travel.
- Work/life balance — Employees who are always on the road often report more stress, less productivity and reduced job satisfaction. Video removes the need to travel, increasing morale, productivity and collaboration, and allows managers to maintain in-person communication.
- Distance learning — Schools, hospitals and other training facilities get an added lesson in conservation when they connect via videoconferencing to remote institutions to enhance learning opportunities and save on costs. They can also easily share recorded content for future lessons.
- Research and development — Designers and researchers around the globe can hold live face-to-face discussions about product design, carry out component modifications during video meetings, and move to advance development timelines without increasing their carbon footprint.
- Team building — Multiple offices don't have to mean isolated teams. Videoconferencing allows remote teammates to see each other as often as if they were in the same office, maybe more. It helps enhance collaboration and build camaraderie without the associated wastes of travel.
- HR recruiting — Initial face-to-face screenings of out-of-town candidates cut costs and carbon emissions by eliminating the need to travel for interviews. Moreover, video interviews are much more effective than phone interviews since managers can read candidates' facial expressions.
- Real-time collaboration — Organisations can deal with large amounts of rich data and collaborate in real time from multiple locations with the visual and multimedia capabilities of videoconferencing instead of losing productivity from rigorous travel out into the field.
During these challenging economic times, the pressure to address climate change is still very real. The economy will bounce back, but the environment will continue to suffer unless the global business community acts now. Videoconferencing is one of the few solutions that can help organisations address both cost savings and green goals.
*Phil Siefert is the Regional Director Australia/New Zealand for Tandberg.