IT Going Green – a Comparison of Corporate and Personal Attitudes and Actions

This is my second post on the results of a survey of the views of IT professionals on Green IT that BT conducted in June 2009.

I see a strong indication from our survey respondents that companies that take a strong position on climate change actions and policy are able to influence the views of their employees in the same direction.

· In companies with a formal policy on climate change, 55% of individuals believe human activity is a major cause of climate change. This figure is only 38% for companies that have expressed no concern or are climate change skeptics.

· In companies with a formal policy, only 5% of individuals believe human activity has little or no impact on climate change. Whereas this figure is 14% for companies that have expressed no concern or are climate change skeptics.

Companies with a strong climate change policy may attract recruits sympathetic to the topic. However given timescales I think the stronger dynamic here is that companies have influenced the views of existing employees through company policies.

Good news (although you will have to look at page 12 of the paper itself to see the data) that 50-60% of respondents with a neutral or negative view towards climate change, nevertheless reported participating in environmental actions such as turning off electrical equipment, recycling and traveling less.

The same data set also shows pretty consistently that respondents of all persuasions are more likely to participate in environmentally friendly activities in their personal life than at work. So there is some room for us CR professionals to improve engagement at work across the board.

My first post on this topic was Cost/ROI – A Double Edged Sword.