Get Employees and Customers to Act Green

CIO: So it sounds like IT has a big role to play beyond the data center. With paperless statements, Citi is trying to use IT to drive customer behavior. What about employee behavior?

Adams: Even small things make a difference, like asking employees to power down their computers or bring personal mugs to work, and creating programs to support telecommuting. Just last year in Asia, we saw energy consumption drop by 5 percent simply through educating and engaging employees on this issue. The program has been so successful that we’re launching it globally this year.

For companies our size, there’s a real opportunity here to make an impact. With our large employee population, even educating employees on how they can reduce energy consumption in their homes (and their electric bills with it) can make a positive difference that goes above and beyond business practices.

Douglas: Through our telecommuting program, OpenWork, our employees can opt to give up their permanent office in exchange for shared office space, home equipment and infrastructure subsidies (such as for DSL and power). Our IT team supports employees wherever they are. We currently have over 18,000 employees, or over 56 percent, in the program. In the last five years we have cut our office space by one-sixth, have saved over $60 million a year on space and power, and we have saved an estimated 29,000 tons of CO2 per year due to reduced employee commuting.

Generally we try to measure everything by dollars and environmental impact (in this case CO2 is a good measure). In addition, we measure employee retention rates and job satisfaction. It’s higher among people in OpenWork. Productivity is tougher [to measure], but we are doing some studies there.

Finding the Right Metrics

CIO: Can you actually measure the energy savings of letting people work at home, or printing fewer documents?

Douglas: Absolutely, though it may take some work to get a very accurate answer. In most cases, however, you can get a good approximation fairly easily.

Step 1 in any energy-efficiency program is to measure where you are at and to set goals. We’ve found out interesting things in every building and data center we’ve measured in detail. Something jumps out that makes you go, Huh? And when you dig into it, you usually find out that you can save some power with a very simple change.

Klustner: We always recommend that IT organizations do an energy audit for each particular energy-efficiency measure they initiate. Measurement and verification (M&V) becomes critical to evaluate the efficacy of the efficiency program over time. It allows the organization to highlight results with employees, shareholders and the press. And, most importantly, it provides a way for IT to continue to optimize energy efficiency over time, by pointing out areas where additional energy savings can be realized.