Can webinars make an environmental impact?

Please welcome our guest blogger, Ken Molay . . . .

I’ve been enjoying reading The Green Blog and I applaud InterCall for helping to raise awareness and keep the conversation going about green initiatives. Consequently I was delighted when the gang asked if I would contribute an article about green trends from my perspective tracking the webinar industry. I stay pretty well connected with news and information from vendors and users of web conferencing technology through my own blogs in that arena (www.TheWebinarBlog.com and www.WebinarWire.com).

It’s certainly no secret that environmental benefits are a hot marketing trend at the moment. You can take your pick of pithy and (sometimes) witty headlines such as “Green Is The New Black”, “Green Is Sexy”, and “Green Is Good.” Web conferencing providers have an easy play in this space with the obvious benefits they can promote from meeting attendees forgoing travel in favor of remote participation.

Some conferencing providers have started providing “carbon reduction” calculators to help their clients estimate environmental impact reduction by not traveling to a central meeting space. Anything that helps people to think more about the subject and want to take a more active role in reducing their environmental footprint is welcome, and I would be the last person to denigrate vendors for their efforts. But even the most avid supporters of such calculators would have to admit that the estimation algorithms are crudely drawn at best.

The usual discussion around environmental benefits of virtual meetings centers on carbon output from commercial air travel, with perhaps a few extra points tacked on for automobile rides to and from the airport. I’ve always been a bit cynical about the air travel piece of the calculation. Those planes are flying fixed routes and carrying freight and mail in addition to your personal 250 pounds of body and luggage. The net incremental impact of you taking a seat on that flight or not might not be so very large (unless we all stop flying and the airlines cancel some flights completely). The percentage additional fuel burned to support each additional passenger probably isn’t all that much. (Disclaimer: I’m not a aeronautical engineer and I haven’t researched the real numbers. I may be all wet on this belief.)

But I think the impact calculators overlook some hefty additional environmental benefits that are harder to estimate, but very real. Consider the case of a virtual seminar, rather than a smaller team meeting or collaborative session with a few participants. Web seminars may have hundreds of people in the audience and may include several presenters, located in different cities or countries. If we ask presenters and attendees to travel to a central location for a physical meeting, it’s not just the air travel that impacts the environment. A meeting room that had been sitting dark now needs lighting, air conditioning, electricity for sound systems, vacuuming, possibly washed and dried tablecloths, and so on. Attendees use hotel rooms with yet more resources devoted to lighting, temperature control, washing sheets and towels, vacuuming, etc. If you serve meals or snacks to your attendees, you are responsible for additional transportation of the ingredients, along with the impact associated with cooking, serving, and clean up. Since individual attendees have no control over what foods or portion sizes end up on their plates, there is inevitable wastage (along with more clean up and disposal impacts on the environment).

Yes, I realize that even virtual attendees need lights on in their offices and have to eat, but these impact factors can be minimized when left to each person’s individual control. A conscientious person can choose the amount and type of food they want, when they want it. They probably don’t wash their sheets and towels every night. If they work in an open space office plan, they don’t even have individual lighting costs to contend with, since the office lights are on whether they are there or off at some remote seminar location!

All this is just my way of pointing out that web seminars can have an even greater environmental benefit than you might have thought at first glance. As web conferencing technology gets better, internet bandwidth and speed improve, and people become more accustomed to getting their information online rather than in person, we should see greater and greater use of large-scale web seminars. And that’s going to be a good thing for all of us.

>> Ken Molay is president of Webinar Success, offering production and consulting services to companies making use of web conferencing for structured events.

Comments

[George Gosieski]

Ken,

I applaud your perspective.

That being said, I feel there is a larger, more powerful story to tell involving Alternative Workplace Strategies (AWS) and the enabling roll of collaborative and social networking technologies.

Until recently, AWS programs such as mobility and teleworking have struggled for several reasons - Limited change management, Conflicting policies, Resistant culture, Unsupportive infrastructure, and rudimentary technology to name a few.

Understanding why AWS programs are becoming successful and the symbiotic relationship between AWS and enabling technologies requires an integrated perspective using a Sustainable Growth model where:

People + Place + Planet + Performance = Sustainable Growth

People. AWS improves work-life balance allowing people to work anytime and anywhere. This is particularly important in addressing recruiting and retention as the workforce becomes increasingly diverse and demographics become more dynamic and broad.

Enabling technologies play a critical role in defining the degree of mobility an AWS program can offer. The mix and integration of these technologies impact the perceived complexity, user experience, and adoption rate. User interface and reliability impact the continued use and breadth of adoption.

Another critical factor impacting success and adoption curves is change management. All things being equal, change management defines immediate and long term success. Three examples illustrating the importance of this little used and poorly understood tool come to mind.

Our team was involved in a very large and successful AWS implementation. Change management was the foundation of the implementation process. The project team's initial adoption rate prediction was 30%. The pilot project (1,200 people) had an adoption rate of 80% within the first 30 days thanks to a strong change management program. Four years later 9 out of 10 employees would not go back to a traditional program.

The next example is a technology project for converting a corporation's telephone system to voice over IP (~10k handset in 6 months). This project demonstrated equally impressive adoption rates with 80% of the users productive within the first hour of going live. This project was driven by the change management plan and not by IT's implementation plan.

This last example is also a technology project and stands in sharp contrast to the previous examples. The same company in the second example sponsored a corporate-wide roll-out of a collaborative tool. The project was driven by IT's implementation plan with little consideration to change management. The adoption rate was only 17% after 30 days. The project team declared the project a failure having expected the same adoption rates as the phone system conversion. The big differentiator was change management.

The point. IT is not the enduser. Non-tech savvy people in the business unit are the enduser. Introducing a new tool to a corporate audience is no different than introducing a new product to the consumer at large. It requires internal marketing, advertising, and public relations.

Place. Real estate portfolio becomes more efficient typically seeing reductions of 30% or more. Lean principles are applied to the workplace where office building contribute to efficient business process rather than stifle them.

We have found that 75% of occupied office space is vacant either because people are not there or they are performing there work in other locations.

Where are they and how do they work? Both good questions with no scientific answers. The fact that they are doing it and, in most cases, without approved collaborative and social networking tools creates: business risk, recruiting and retention issues, cultural conflict, and productivity issues. It's the "MacGiver" effect.

The point: It's not about real estate. It's about enabling work. Corporate Real Estate portfolios reflect traditional work practices. They are leaving "money on the table" having not recognized the impact of changing workforce demographics and work behavior enabled by technology and macro-economics.

Planet. Reduction in employee travel has great economic and environmental benefits. Collaborative and social networking tools have set the stage for significant gains in both areas. A hurdle that, until now, has been difficult to overcome is corporate culture. This hurdle will diminish as the techno savvy next generation exiting universities move into the workforce.

That being said, the resistance created by the cultural hurdle will be dwarfed by the need for more innovation over shorter cycles at lower cost. Rising energy costs, Climate Change legislation, and growing investor sentiment that Climate Change is now a business risk will create a sense of urgency needed to overcome the cultural hurdle.

The Point: This isn't Y2K. It's Y2K meets Sarbox. The economics of not addressing climate change will make a company extinct because they won't be competitive. Going Lean will minimize the "cost" of reducing the environmental footprint. It's about doing the right thing in the right way - structuring environmental efforts to achieve the most environmental, financial, and social benefit.

Example: If you want to accelerate environmental change in 3rd world countries such as China and India then start reducing your supply chain environmental footprint.

Example: AWS, leveraging collaborative and social networking tools, has an astonishing impact on a company's environmental footprint. We've completed a preliminary assessment of a 5,000 person campus with 2,600 mobile employees and found a carbon footprint reduction of ~ 14%.

4+% was CO2 avoidance due to not acquiring and maintaining more space. This did not include the CO2 footprint associated with the design and construction of the additional space.

9+% is a recurring CO2 reduction due to changes in commuting behavior. This does not address the move to paperless meetings and waste reduction resulting from AWS.

Let me put the significance of these statistics into perspective. We also tracked the impact of low and "no cost" energy reduction projects at this campus and found that these efforts generated ~ 3% reduction in CO2. From this point on, significant investments in energy management system upgrades and building system upgrades would need to occur in order to achieve further reductions.

Performance. AWS and its enabling technologies have resulted in greater productivity and spontaneous collaboration. In some instances, we've seen project cycle times dropping by as much as 60% coupled with greater customer satisfaction.

The Point: Your business is an ecosystem. Great environmental gains can be made while improving the competitiveness of your company. A thoughtful, holistic approach focused on People, Place, Planet, and Performance reduces the "cost of earning a buck".

What does the future hold?

Long term: Legislation will require energy neutral buildings and carbon negative companies.

Real estate portfolios will begin to look more like mesh networks for the purposes of: Reducing environmental footprint; Virtualizing business processes; Optimizing business continuity against climate change, politics, economics, and pandemics

Companies will radically reduce their real estate portfolios in effect shifting the portfolio to the employee (teleworking)

Organizations and supply chains will metamorphosis into Ecosystems/Biospheres.

The remaining portfolio will be converted or replaced by collaborative hubs driving as collaboration becomes more "layered" and activity based.

There will be an increasing demand for more sophisticated, transparent, and integrated collaborative and social networking tools as business processes, policies, infrastructure, and culture adapt to the increasing velocity of change.

George Gosieski
Managing Partner
Business EcoSystems

[Jason Schiavoni]

I felt this was a very well written article. As a person who travels one or two times a month to trade shows, I feel there are many ways in the marketing world to cut back on carbon reduction. Now webinars and trade shows aren't exactly the same thing but right now there are a couple virtual trade shows out there to cut down on the travel and a way to be greener. I have looked into these virtual trade shows and will even be sitting at my computer next month walking around the floor and checking out the booths. These look to have almost everything covered but still have a little bit more to go to get that real interaction and face to face time. I know I didn't talk about webinars in this but I feel it’s in the same area of generating leads and getting your company's information in front of the customers and another way in the future for carbon reduction.

[Abby Clubb]

Just yesterday I saw an article in a Network World enewsletter that was talking about productivity. 40% or so of people surveyed said that web conferencing is vauleable or extremely valuable in getting their daily work done. You can read the whole thing here:
http://www.networkworld.com/newsletters/gwm/2008/033108msg2.htmlnlhtcomms=ts_040308&nladname=040308unifiedcommunicationsal

[Anne Guenther]

Interesting article - thanks Ken! I'd like to dig a little deeper as it relates to the 'impact calculator.' Several companies want to see a cost benefit analysis of how certain "Green" tools like webinars and web conferencing can really make a difference. As in, testing the numbers.

I've seen calculators that take into account cost of the flight, car rental, hotel and meals per person for a business trip and then compare these costs against an online, collaborative service (i.e., web conferencing). The outcome provides a snapshot of the financial impact. Yet what's missing in order to tell a more compelling story of not just the financial expense, but also the environmental impact?