With sustainability at the forefront of business strategy, those responsible for managing people and energy within organisations face growing pressures to drive change. Sam Arje, Senior Energy Consultant and EnCO Practitioner here at TEAM Energy, explains how energy efficiency training equips businesses with the tools to create an engaged workforce—one that actively reduces energy use, cuts emissions, and drives cost savings.
From directors to energy, sustainability, and HR managers, organisational leaders are seeing the need for meaningful transformation. As they tackle internal challenges and look to enhance their teams’ skills, energy efficiency training offers a strategic, organisation-wide approach.
By embedding sustainability into daily operations and aligning training with business objectives, organisations can empower employees at all levels to take action, creating lasting impact and accelerating the journey to Net Zero.
Why energy efficiency training is so important now
For a long time the tide has been turning. Compared to a decade ago, attitudes towards energy efficiency and sustainability have changed dramatically. Research from PwC shows that today most CEOs regard sustainability as an investment not a cost. What’s more, over two thirds report that climate related spending hasn’t impacted their costs negatively, and one-third report it increased their revenue.
While the desire is there, many organisations still don’t know how to make a difference. Those with energy and sustainability managers are further along their journey – they have some structures and process in place and may even be reporting on some of their activities. However, there are still many obstacles to large scale change, a big share of which comes from training and educating workforces on the need for energy efficiency and sustainability. If people don’t know what to do or why, large-scale changes will be met with resistance. This reluctance to change can become an issue that risks an organisation’s reputation too. Many energy efficiency regulation compliance plans are published publicly, which could affect clients’ or future employees’ decisions.
The need for energy efficiency knowledge within the workforce is not only a hurdle for enacting things like net zero strategies, it’s also crucial for retaining employees and ensuring they’re ready for the challenges of the future. Research from Deloitte has highlighted how millennials and Gen Z want to work at organisations with good sustainability credentials. Two in ten employees have already left jobs to work in more sustainable organisations, while one-quarter say they plan to change in the future. Given the UK’s green skills gap and recognition that almost all of tomorrow’s jobs will be touched by sustainability, having a well-trained workforce could be a make-or-break issue, determining the long-term future of many businesses.
To address these issues organisations can take a 360-degree approach through training, creating a knowledgeable workforce that attracts others and enacts strategic change. What benefits HR managers also benefits energy and sustainability managers and directors too. Everyone’s needs are met by a workforce that’s empowered and inspired to use energy more effectively.
What is energy efficiency training and how to implement it
Energy efficiency training educates individuals and equips people with new knowledge and skills so that they can reduce energy consumption, waste and cost by making changes to their behaviour. Depending on the end goal of the organisation, training can lie anywhere on a spectrum of a 30-minute session once per year, to ongoing educational programmes designed and delivered by consultants.
However, what makes energy efficiency training most effective is that it should be created as a best-fit for the organisation in question. This could be through bespoke consultancy, or through train-the-trainer programmes. For maximum impact, several things need to be considered.
Energy efficiency training must be suitable for the staff. It must meet people where they’re at, based on their role and existing knowledge. It must be relevant to people’s daily work and their place within organisation at large. In my experience, while there may be crossover between roles or sectors, you must speak the language of who you’re training and give them examples and a reason for changing that’s relevant to them. What works for machinists is quite different to what works for university librarians or accountants, for example.
Understanding the organisation’s current energy savings and efficiency efforts is key too. This prevents lost time – as people aren’t being taught the same thing twice – and ensures training helps address the organisation’s issues as they currently stand. It also aligns training with objectives. Let’s not forget that carbon reduction and energy efficiency are different aims, and while they do overlap, the best results come from aligning activities with objectives.
Strategy is essential, of course. Energy efficiency training should be a part of a much broader energy efficiency strategy that focuses on many things, from setting targets, collecting data, upgrading assets and reporting on progress. This is not to diminish the role of training. If anything, it’s the opposite. Strategies are needed, but they don’t become reality without training. Training enables organisations to implement their strategies, and, in many cases, it’s what helps organisations craft a strategy in the first place.
Changing the “norm”
I could go into nudge theory, the Pareto principle and several other behavioural change methods. But I like to think of the situation like a wedding reception.
At the start of the evening, nobody’s on the dancefloor. But, once the speeches are done and the married couple have their first dance, other people start to join in. Over the course of the night the DJ plays everyone’s favourite songs to attract a crowd, and eventually there’s only a handful of outliers sat around the edges. What was ‘normal’ has changed; everyone’s dancing.
Today’s organisations can be like that. But instead of dancing, it’s a changed culture and social norm that’s addressing energy, sustainability, and HR managers’ issues head on. Energy efficiency training has given people the knowledge to save energy, reduce emissions and cut costs within their organisations. The sorts of small things they do at home are carried over to the workplace and have a big impact. Training also attracts other people to the cause and changed the norm. It’s secured buy in from both leaders and staff, making employees engaged and energy and sustainability managers effective and empowered in their roles. As the organisation meets its sustainability targets and compliance standards, new ideas and ways of working are established. This helps the organisation stand out, it becomes a place that people want to work and an organisation that other organisations want to work with.
What’s next?
Energy efficiency training has some of the best return on investment a company can make for energy saving. Compared to new assets and infrastructure that require large sums of capital, training is a low-cost way of reducing energy and emissions. Crucially, it is through training that organisations can create a new culture that brings organisation-wide benefits and address energy, sustainability, and HR managers’ challenges while enhancing their reputations with all stakeholders.
