POWER TO THE PEOPLE - Staff attitudes steering UK business through energy economy drive

Aug. 2, 2011 - PRLog -- The survey research reveals that nearly half of respondents (49 per cent) shut down their PC at the end of the day because of personal concerns about conserving costs and electricity, rather than because of a corporate directive to do so.

The results of the June 2011 survey of 122 organisations across all sectors of UK business indicate that private and public sector employers need to take steps to better understand staff concerns regarding IT energy use and deploy policies where possible.

The results show reasonable diversity in employee behaviour and attitudes, indicating a big opportunity for companies to make savings by implementing power management policies. 44 per cent of respondents didn’t take steps to save power at work, but overall, 49 per cent of respondents worried about energy usage at work and 91 per cent cared how much their employer spent on energy.

This employee-led move to save energy was reflected in the fact that 56 per cent of employees took steps to reduce power usage at the end of the working day. 48 per cent switched off their PC completely, leaving 52% powered on. 15 per cent locked the screen but did not switch it off.

The combination of employee enthusiasm for power saving and the apparent sporadic measures in evidence to reduce power displayed in the survey point to an ideal opportunity for UK businesses to implement corporate energy saving policies, according to independent Green IT experts.

Independent survey analyst and green IT expert Jean Ritchie, commented, “While 91 percent of respondents ‘cared’ how much their employer spent on energy, 49 per cent ‘worried’ about energy usage at work. Possibly the remainder thought that employers were taking appropriate steps to limit energy usage, or perhaps they felt there was nothing they could do to change the situation.”

Jean Ritchie concludes: “Despite the large majority (91 per cent) of employees who cared about employer energy spend, the survey found that 24 per cent of employees actually took no measures to reduce energy usage, which would have a huge difference to the power costs for their employers.  Of these, 44 per cent cited inconvenience – too long to start their computer in the morning – as the reason for not powering down.  These figures are very significant since such a large percentage of employees could all benefit from the arrival of power management software which would relieve them of the need to take action to ‘put their computer to bed’ at night, or to wake it up again in the morning.”

Ashley Leonard, CEO at Verismic Software commented, “A common reason computers are not shut down at night, is often that IT staff have configured these PCs to carry out updates of virus or other software.  PC Power management software gets round this problem by making it possible to carry out updates overnight, when it will not inconvenience users.  There is thus the double benefit of ensuring compliance in power saving, and reducing inconvenience.”

Survey responses also suggested that, despite a lack of corporate directives, the majority of UK employers were regarded by their staff as being aware of energy matters:

•74 per cent were said by their employees to care about energy usage
•23 per cent were said by their employees to need to care more

These results indicate that stricter, more directive corporate energy saving policies would be welcomed by staff, to reflect their belief in their employers’ values and to prove their commitment to Green IT.

“Overall, the survey has shown some encouraging results,” Ashley Leonard concluded. “By tuning in a little better to their employees attitudes to the energy and costs they use at work, companies could really harness what seems to be a need to conserve and be governed. Employees seem to want to be secure in knowing that their PC or Laptop is using minimum resources but available and working whenever required. Centralised PC power management, a strong corporate policy on energy and powering down is a good way forward.”

For more information on Verismic Power Manager visit www.verismic.com

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Verismic, a Sparxent company, is focused on developing solutions to reduce operational costs, enhance end user experience, and increase efficiency of IT support staff. The Verismic product range contains an array of systems management solutions designed to extend systems management and service desk capabilities. The toolset includes solutions such as PC Power Management, Password Reset, Desktop and Service Desk integration, and Historical Tracking