10 Steps to Make Your Business Climate Friendly & Achieve Net Zero

As companies reopen with new Covid-19 regulations, nearly all will be making some fundamental changes to how they do business given the new landscape and changing consumer sentiment. Things are going to be quite different. Further, all businesses have a requirement to achieve Net Zero – i.e. your overall business activities need to be carbon neutral.

Employees and customers not only require higher standards of public hygiene but they will also be turning to businesses that are environmentally conscious. Being an environmentally responsible business, with environmentally sound practices, products and services will become the new norm. Try and get ahead of it.

We have created a simple action plan to help businesses adopt some simple steps to getting climate ready and to achieve NetZero.

Here are our 10 Steps to Make Your Business Climate Friendly:

1. Switch to renewable energy in your office, factories, vehicle fleets and tools. There are a growing number of green energy suppliers so finding the right one for your needs is quite easy. Also, electric vehicles and tools are becoming much more pervasive.
2. Hire on-site employees who live within a cycle commute – the rest could work from home. Help keep pollution down and fully embrace the new ways of working. Now that you have had a few months to put in place successful home working routines and processes during the Coronavirus lockdown it’s time to lock those benefits in.
3. Minimise waste and recycle everything you can. The Zero Waste movement is starting to pick up some steam – try and adopt what is practical in an office setting. Become a single use plastics free business.
4. Lease an eco-office, warehouse or factory with a zero carbon footprint. At a minimum make sure your office is as well insulated as possible for the winter and allows as much sunlight, for natural warming, during the late spring and summer. That way you will use less energy heating your offices.
5. Train employees in DSP’s 10 steps to Help Solve the Climate Change Crisis.
6. Rewild your green areas. Plant trees, shrubs and wild grasses – the combination of the three provides the basic habitats for wildlife and insects. Place benches in nature to support employee wellbeing.
7. Train your company leaders in the methods and approaches to developing environmentally conscious behaviours, practises and products. 
8. Source eco materials and local supplies wherever possible from environmentally conscious suppliers. 
9. Organise team meetings and away days at eco-friendly hotels and venues. Try to set up outdoor meeting spaces and actively support outdoor meetings when employees, suppliers or customers are at your offices.
10. Measure the improvements and accomplishments you are achieving on the road to becoming fully climate friendly on a 6 monthly basis and communicate your progress to employees and customers.

Building an environmentally conscious organisation is an exciting process and one which will prove highly satisfying for you and your organisation. Done right, it will also add considerable value to your products or services as well as your brand. Include all your stakeholders in the journey – it could prove quite empowering and motivational.

At DSP we help organisations and individuals to become more climate friendly and adopt healthier living approaches. We offer a cost effective online app, DSP Online, to help you better understand how to become environmentally conscious with simple actionable techniques gleaned from the day to day approaches and learnings at DSP’s center of excellence in the UK southwest. Sign up to DSP Online today – CLICK HERE.

Why are CEO’s No Longer Trusted?

I read a survey recently which stated that since the Coronavirus crisis hit, CEO’s trust ratings have plummeted. Mind you, have you met Dave from Tesco? Yet, terrifyingly enough, just a few months ago the same survey revealed that companies were more trusted than politicians (kind of a low bar) and the media (kinda no bar).

It seems that Coronavirus exposes people to a special little nano virus that not only attacks our lungs but also forces us to reveal who we really are. More warts than all. Politicians, of course, become total f***whits, while the media reminds us of the meaning of vanity (I mean who in friggs name stays on air from home all red faced and bleary eyed while self isolating with the Corona) and, it seems, CEO’s are all about optimising….., well, really just one thing – their bank balance.

Sadly neoliberalism created this convenient scam which makes it legit for EVERY CEO to be focused on one thing and one thing only – making them the money. Yep, neoliberal for ‘SHOW ME THE MONEEEEEYYY!!’. Placing the passion for great products, customer service and inventions on the scrap heap named Wall Street – all too easily bus chucked in the name of Warren stiffin Buffett. And think about it, do you really want to be Warren? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean his cash which is handy for Bill and Melinda, I mean him? Think about it.

Maybe it no longer needs to be that way. Maybe Corona won’t just kill all of us, more importantly it will kill neoliberalism. It’ll nuke the greedy ass CEO. Make a Dodo of Warren. Still wanna be Warren?

And maybe then we’ll be clear to start again, to find a post capitalist model where every CEO follows a new path, a better path, you know, where they become Jacinda Ardern. And more than that maybe the new new CEO will be a fusion of Jacinda, Trevor Noah and James-I’ll-drive-you-anywhere-so-long-as-you-crack-out-some-nice-ass-tune-Corden all mixed up with a smidgen of Charlie Chaplin. Empathy and ethics combined with humour and slap stick. With more slap than stick and no slap and tickle cos that’d be more like Harvey boy Weinstein and look how it worked out for him.

Maybe the new CEO school should teach leaders that so long as they always put people first then profits will follow. No longer profits first in the vain hope that people might follow. And putting people first means making them laugh, or cry, or just talk. You know like Oprah did. Where CEO’s leave the finances to finance people, the data science to data scientists, leave the engineering to engineers, the marketing to marketers, the backhanders to politicians and just focus on the people. Actually, even more than that, by treating customers and employees as ACTUAL people. And treating them like people means treating them like a close friend, a bestie (just not in the Harvey Weinstein kinda way).

Where it’s the done thing to treat colleagues as actual, real life friends. Where you get your advice from Joey or Rachel instead of McKinsey or Bain and where not everything is in the name of business but where it’s about the mates (again, just not in a Harvey Weinstein kinda way). Where the new business hipsters are about making the friends to make money and I don’t mean a new season of Friends though that would be nice too.

Imagine if reopening post Covid-19 lockdown meant fewer employees dragged into shitty offices, wharehouses, factories or foosball halls (thanks Google). Where the office politics gets kicked into touch. Where Jerry Maguire was right all along and fewer customers with deeper relationships really is the best way forward. Where the new company bubble means we get to generate a bit less less money while becoming lots more successful.

Where we get to spend more time enjoying empathy, ethics, humour and the sheer dream of one day finally hitting the pub again. Where every day on the job is fun and fruitful, emotional and valuable, loving and luxurious. Just like a day on the set of Baywatch. Where all of a sudden everyone’s your friend and they visit you all the time, you know, to make sure they also get on the set of Baywatch. Where it’s like grabbing a drink with your best buddies, not drinking the cool aid but swigging real alcohol and speaking it like it is. Yep, where every day’s another Guinness ad.

So, as we reopen, think about replacing the word customer or employee with ‘friend’. Ditch the customer toilet signs or customer loyalty programmes cos its anyones bathroom and friend loyalty. It’s the friends cafe and friend parking. Where the only new office layout you’ll need to research is the set of ‘Friends’. Where its couches and weird leather chairs and kitchens and cafes and terraces. Where you show up every day just for the laughs. Where customer ratings soar cos they’re from friends like they were last time around, just more legit this time. Where you get to write a new script every day. Where people show up cos they want to. Where Chandler finally feels truly at home.

Now that really would be a new norm. That might even be worth breaking out of lockdown loonies, donning the hazmat suit, getting back on a train and actually showing up to work for.

Where do I sign up?

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.

5 New Long Term Consumer Trends from Coronavirus

It is clear that the Coronavirus crisis, the lockdowns and the new sets of behaviours required to survive it have brought about a number of short term changes but, perhaps more importantly, Covid-19 will usher in a number of new, longer term trends. We believe that there are 5 major trends that will establish themselves as more permanent global shifts.

We should not forget that the massive societal adaption currently in process is profound for it is lasting, it is global and it has extreme structural economic consequences. We will have to adapt to another 12 – 18 months of social distancing across our societies and businesses while also accepting that a once in a century great depression has started and will take many years to work itself through.

How we adapt to these changes as consumers, as businesses and as politicians will prove to be a vital barometer of our likely success in the coming years.

Here are 5 New Long Term Consumer Trends from Coronavirus:

1. Healthier living – our attitude to food, exercise, wellbeing and the environment will be fundamentally altered by Coronavirus. A growing body of evidence, alongside a once in a lifetime lockdown experience, should give rise to a grand awakening of our combined consciousness around a more frugal, a more natural and a healthier existence. This, in turn, will accelerate the shift towards more sustainable and eco-friendly products and services and a greater need for in-home enhancements and experiences. Expect to see wider adoption of vegan diets, plant based cuisine, organic foods and drinks, eco-fashion, eco-tourism, eco-DIY, books on climate friendly behaviors and activities, greater focus on energy and health efficient homes and offices, less international travel and an accelerated shift to renewable energy and electric vehicles and tools. We should also expect to see a greater demand for nature based experiences, gardening in general, wildlife gardening, rewilding, vegetable gardens and foraging.

2. Homeworking – perhaps one of the biggest single economic behavior changes coming from the Coronavirus lockdowns has been the global adoption of home working. This is a trend that has been building for a decade or more but has now cemented itself as the new way for companies to organise themselves post Coronavirus. Every company has had to figure out how to do it and now that they have made the complex shift they will not want to give it up. Indeed, economic necessity will drive its further adoption particularly given the ensuing economic shock. Continued social distancing requirements post lockdown will force companies to redesign offices with fewer desks per square foot meaning fewer employees in the office and more working from home. Employees will also push for continued home working as they will have discovered how much time and stress was wasted on commuting. Home working is logical given the wider shift by businesses to move their organisation online and is a natural consequence of the trend towards knowledge based business and the outsourcing of manufacturing and distribution. After all, if you can serve your customers online why can’t you organise your workforce to work online as well?

3. eServices – as Coronavirus has accelerated the shift to ecommerce it will also create far greater demand for online home services. After all, if you can use a video and perhaps even a remote engineer on Zoom to explain to you how to install the new kitchen sink, or washing machine or simple plumbing fix and it is cheaper, then why not? Particularly as we will remain concerned about allowing tradespeople into our homes for some time after lockdown. We should also see a shift towards online plumbing services, simple electrical, gardening, DIY, car repair and more. Indeed this falls into a growing demand for wider automation across industries.

4. Online Sports & Culture – thanks to social distancing guidelines we will have spent a good portion of 2020 avoiding going to sports events, concerts, live performances and theatres. Instead we will have learnt to consume sports fixtures digitally possibly fused with gaming, watching live concerts on YouTube and enjoying theatre on Netflix. Indeed with the rollout of 5G more immersive, higher-definition digital experiences supported by a new generation of inbuilt and stand alone speakers will make consuming sports and culture from our living room or dining table more enjoyable than ever. Content creators, sports professionals and artists, like any product manufacturer, will have used the Coronavirus crisis as a trigger to shift more of their professional endeavours, content and communications online.

5. Digital Healthcare – for governments to continue to offer universal healthcare at scale but in a more financially sustainable way they will have to shift to digital healthcare. Coronavirus will show us the power of education and communications online using WhatsApp, Zoom or LinkedIn to deliver any kind of business, research or educational meeting. This has made it more than possible for the digital provision of basic healthcare so that doctors brick and mortar surgeries and hospitals can be reserved for a potentially higher number of more seriously ill patients and the future pandemics which are bound to hit us with greater frequency like severe weather events have become a part of our new reality. Indeed, there are a number of all digital healthcare platforms gaining traction across the western world. We should not forget that Covid-19 is just the latest in a regular series of public health crises we are dealing with as a consequence of global warming. Until we start tackling the climate crisis, sustainably removing carbon and other pollutants from our atmosphere while halting the destruction of key habitats for wildlife and natural plant life, we will have to get used to a steady stream of public health crises whether from pandemics, droughts, flooding, wildfires or industrial and urban pollution.

How industries and specific solutions are shaped to address the above 5 trends could have profound implications on our movement, privacy and civil liberties. The right balance, particularly with regard to civil liberties, will need to be maintained. Choosing the right politicians, policies and organisational leaders through this shift will be a greater focus of debate.

But there can be little doubt that the consumers, businesses and politicians that are the quickest and best at adapting to these changes will find the greatest success in the new world. New industries will be born and we should think hard about how we develop our skills so that we can work in the climate industries, eco-product manufacturing and eco-service delivery, healthier living industries, renewable energy and climate science, homeworking product manufacturing, design and consultancy services, digital home services, online professional services, online sports and entertainment and digital healthcare.

If you enjoy these posts on ‘Surviving’ all I ask is for you to support a vital Climate Change project, called DSP, by giving just £3 or just over $3 per month. To find out more CLICK THIS LINK.