Is hybrid working as green as it seems?

The wide­spread shift to hybrid work­ing among office-based employ­ees is not as good for the envi­ron­ment as many com­men­ta­tors would have us believe, accord­ing to recent research pub­lished by Cush­man & Wake­field. Although the com­pa­ny is a glob­al real-estate giant that may have a vest­ed inter­est in bol­ster­ing the com­mer­cial prop­er­ty mar­ket, its study’s find­ings still give pause for thought.

Based on the expe­ri­ences of Aus­tralian com­pa­nies, the research has found that the hybrid approach pro­duces more green­house gas emis­sions than the con­ven­tion­al five-day week based at HQ. The prob­lem is that, while organ­i­sa­tions are con­tin­u­ing to heat and pow­er their offices, their employ­ees are using more ener­gy in their homes. 

As a result, although many firms are cut­ting their own ener­gy con­sump­tion and direct CO2 emis­sions, their indi­rect (scope-three) emis­sions, which aren’t wide­ly mea­sured, are on the rise. This sit­u­a­tion is like­ly to cause com­pli­ance risks in future, as the reg­u­la­to­ry pres­sure to report scope-three emis­sions builds around the world. 

Giv­en these fac­tors, the green­est approach for employ­ers would sim­ply be to oblige their hybrid work­ers to return to HQ on a full-time basis, the report argues.

But doing that would go against what many knowl­edge work­ers say they want. The past 12 months have seen a trend that has become known in HR cir­cles as the Great Res­ig­na­tion, as peo­ple have quit their jobs in record num­bers. For the many organ­i­sa­tions that are find­ing it hard to recruit and retain peo­ple, the abil­i­ty to offer flex­i­ble work­ing arrange­ments is a key weapon in the war for tal­ent. 

So how can employ­ers best bal­ance these appar­ent­ly con­flict­ing inter­ests? Gudrun Cartwright is direc­tor of cli­mate action at Busi­ness in the Com­mu­ni­ty, a UK char­i­ty advo­cat­ing respon­si­ble enter­prise. She believes that an “ele­ment of prag­ma­tism” is required, not least because oth­er stud­ies have pro­duced more mixed results, par­tic­u­lar­ly when the envi­ron­men­tal impact of com­mut­ing is tak­en into con­sid­er­a­tion. 

For instance, the Car­bon Trust’s Home­work­ing Report in June con­clud­ed that it was more envi­ron­men­tal­ly friend­ly for the aver­age “tele­work­er” to oper­ate pure­ly from home for numer­ous rea­sons. The researchers added that it was dif­fi­cult to plan for a “car­bon opti­mum” under hybrid mod­els, as pat­terns of employ­ee trav­el and ener­gy con­sump­tion are hard­er to mea­sure.

The Inter­na­tion­al Ener­gy Agency (IEA) takes a sim­i­lar stance. In June, its web­site pub­lished an arti­cle enti­tled “Work­ing from home can save ener­gy and reduce emis­sions. But how much?” This con­clud­ed there were some envi­ron­men­tal ben­e­fits to be gained from employ­ees work­ing remote­ly for even one day a week, but added that longer-term effects of such arrange­ments were “uncer­tain”. 

While a more sig­nif­i­cant shift to remote work­ing may reduce demand for office space, lead­ing to an over­all reduc­tion in both ener­gy con­sump­tion and CO2 emis­sions, the IEA added that “habit­u­al home work­ing could lead to peo­ple liv­ing far­ther from their place of work, poten­tial­ly off­set­ting the demand reduc­tions in ener­gy for com­mut­ing”.

Cartwright believes that it’s “prob­a­bly too ear­ly to say what the real impact will be, although we do know there is a risk that hybrid work­ing could make things worse envi­ron­men­tal­ly. Only time will tell.”

One com­pa­ny that believes tak­ing a bal­anced approach will be key, par­tic­u­lar­ly in keep­ing its 1,000 office-based staff engaged, is couri­er com­pa­ny Her­mes UK. These employ­ees are work­ing three days at home and two days at its base on the out­skirts of Leeds. The arrange­ment is giv­ing the firm the flex­i­bil­i­ty it needs to attract recruits from a wider area.

The company’s chief peo­ple offi­cer, Pen­ny Gar­nett, says that her approach is to “make deci­sions about peo­ple with one eye on our ESG agen­da”. The sin­gle biggest reduc­tion Her­mes can make to its car­bon foot­print, she notes, is to con­tin­ue replac­ing its diesel-fuelled deliv­ery vehi­cles with green­er vans equipped with route-opti­mi­sa­tion sys­tems.

As for hybrid work­ing, the sit­u­a­tion is “slight­ly more nuanced”, accord­ing to Gar­nett. Here the focus is on opti­mis­ing the use of office space and using smart sys­tems, such as motion-sen­sor light­ing, to reduce ener­gy con­sump­tion on the premis­es. Her col­league Nan­cy Hob­house, head of ESG, adds that the com­pa­ny is also plan­ning a learn­ing and sup­port pro­gramme to help employ­ees cut their emis­sions at home. 

In Octo­ber 2020, envi­ron­men­tal con­sul­tan­cy EcoAct pub­lished a Home­work­ing Emis­sions Whitepa­per offer­ing a method­ol­o­gy for employ­ers seek­ing to get a grip on their scope-three impact. It sug­gests a range of mea­sures for reduc­ing remote work­ers’ car­bon foot­prints. These include encour­ag­ing them “to switch to renew­able-ener­gy tar­iffs for their home ener­gy; invest­ing in more ener­gy-effi­cient tech­nol­o­gy for col­leagues work­ing from home (this could involve set­ting green pro­cure­ment require­ments for all new lap­tops and oth­er tech­nol­o­gy); and incen­tivis­ing col­leagues to move to more ener­gy-effi­cient heat­ing and cool­ing sys­tems”. 

For Hob­house, it’s a mat­ter of “ensur­ing that you bal­ance the ‘E’ and the ‘S’ in ‘ESG’, because it’s impor­tant to look at the sit­u­a­tion holis­ti­cal­ly. This boils down to ensur­ing that you under­stand the poten­tial ram­i­fi­ca­tions of your deci­sions as an employ­er. So, if you’re think­ing about bring­ing in more flex­i­ble work­ing, for instance, you’ll need to know all the poten­tial effects of that move, both on the envi­ron­ment and on employ­ee well­be­ing and inclu­sion.”

Giv­en that the shift towards hybrid work­ing is still rel­a­tive­ly new, Cartwright observes that “there is still an ele­ment of every­one feel­ing their way”. As a result, she con­cludes, there is a lot to be said for “tak­ing the best of what was there before the lock­downs with the best of what we’ve learnt since then and blend­ing the two. But this does mean that there’ll be an ele­ment of tri­al and error before we get the bal­ance right.”