How to drive down CO2 emissions and improve sustainability with deskbird
October 8, 2024
October 24, 2024
A new way to cut your team’s carbon footprint, one commute at a time
It's 7 a.m. Still sleepy, you're out in the street, packed with other commuters like you, all trying to get to the office on time. Around you: rush-hour trains, gridlocked traffic, and packed buses. It's an accepted routine for modern workers, and it often goes unquestioned—not for everyone, luckily.
Museums Galleries Scotland (MGS), the development body for Scotland’s museum and galleries sector, supporting hundreds of museums across Scotland, decided to investigate this topic further and take a stand against their team's carbon footprint.
With the help of deskbird, their workplace management app, MGS adopted a data-driven approach to track (and reduce) the carbon emissions their employees' commutes produced, all while discovering great opportunities for a more sustainable future.
MGS was already deeply committed to sustainability as part of Scotland’s ambitious Net Zero initiative aiming for netzero by 2045, and their partnership with deskbird created a strategic move to address one of the most unnoticed yet significant sources of carbon emissions: daily commuting.
The cost of the commute
Every day, millions of people worldwide commute to their place of work. These seemingly inconsequential trips—car rides, bus journeys, or train commutes—collectively contribute to the global carbon tally. Understanding the actual cost of these journeys was a priority for MGS as part of its ongoing mission to operate more sustainably. A big ask, especially when your goal is to analyze the impact of your team's commute in a data-focused way.
But no task is too big for deskbird! To achieve this goal, our experienced team would analyze 35 employees' commuting habits based on their scheduling data (over 21 days, in Sept. 2024).
The results
Within a month, 502 journeys were logged in, showing a mix of transportation methods: train, bus, and more environmentally friendly options like walking and cycling.
The results were quite surprising. In just a month, MGS's employees generated an estimated 123.649 kg of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent). However, these emissions were already 3.6 times lower than they would have been had all employees commuted to the office daily—a powerful testament to the effectiveness of hybrid work policies.
Interestingly, even before analyzing emissions data, MGS had already reduced its team's carbon footprint by creating a part-time remote office policy for its staff and encouraging sustainable travel options.
The impact of hybrid work policies aligns with the findings from research published by Environmental Research Letters in 2022, which demonstrated that remote and hybrid work arrangements could significantly reduce transportation emissions.
Data-driven sustainability
Why deskbird works so well for MSG's purpose?
Among other things, deskbird offered a tool that could effectively simplify managing hybrid work scheduling and actively tracking the environmental implications of commuting. All while providing great transparency on when and where employees work—whether at home, the office, or visiting museums around the country. deskbird supports companies in making informed decisions about office space usage, employee scheduling, and, very importantly, commuting habits.
For MGS, this insight was critical.
Thanks to deskbird's integration and the support of our dedicated Customer Experience team, MSG now had access to anonymized data on employees' work locations. Additionally, aggregated insights into commuting distances and typical modes of transportation were available. By integrating this information with government-provided emission metrics, deskbird could calculate the overall CO2 emissions generated by employee commutes without identifying individual data.
As transparency in data is critical to creating sustainable business practices, deskbird demonstrated how it helps companies that want to make hybrid work successful and decide to adopt ESG principles to track, analyze, and mitigate one of the more elusive contributors to carbon emissions—employee travel.
🌱 Looking for a partner in fighting climate change? Reach out to one of our consultants and discover how deskbird can help you monitor and reduce your carbon footprint.
Hybrid work and behavior change
deskbird's benefits extend beyond just reporting. The data insights empower businesses to take preemptive actions directly responsive to patterns and seasonal shifts. For instance, as colder weather approaches, MGS anticipates that more employees may switch from biking to public transport, which has higher emissions, although still better than driving, which is not encouraged. Or they can decide to close certain meeting rooms or sections of the office because more employees are working remotely, saving also on heating and ancillary costs.
With this information, MGS can proactively encourage alternative travel methods or adjust work schedules to minimize environmental impact. Emissions can be significantly reduced when employees can opt for home-working or choose their office days based on traffic and public transport schedules.
A culture of sustainable work
The role of hybrid work in sustainability is fundamental in supporting the right changes to protect the planet. And deskbird can be your right hand for the shift in workplace culture your company might need to achieve the ultimate goal of sustainability. Your employees can be active participants in reducing their carbon footprints, making conscious choices, and working toward ecological responsibility as an essential component of work life.
The successful experiment with MGS demonstrates the potential for any organization to implement hybrid work models with the support of deskbird and achieve similar results.
With the United Nations calling for urgent action to tackle climate change in their 2023 Emissions Gap Report, tools like deskbird are set to become indispensable as they drive actionable change by aligning business operations with environmental goals. As organizations like MGS pave the way with data-informed strategies, the future of sustainable work is no longer an abstract concept—it’s a measurable reality.
A future-oriented solution
Every commute counts and can make a difference.
And tools like deskbird are crucial to driving positive change. Simply turning data into action allows companies to participate actively in the Net Zero journey.
This path toward sustainability isn’t just about cutting emissions today—it's about fostering long-term changes that weave environmental consciousness into everyday work life. And for organizations dedicated to a sustainable future, the journey might begin with something as simple as rethinking the daily commute.
