How Energy Management Dashboards Change Behaviour and Create Sustainable Savings
It’s a truism that “You cannot manage what you cannot measure” and a business needs to react and make impactful decisions constantly at both a strategic and tactical level. These decisions need to be based on a solid platform of accurate management information that is simple to understand, rather than masses of unprocessed data.
This focus on cost is all important because it is a certainty that energy prices will rise – a near guarantee and many authorities are predicting a rise of between 50 and 100% by 2015. As prices rise, businesses will be forced to act by sheer economics and government legislation (usually in the form of ‘incentives’ which in the case of carbon have in reality been stealth taxation).
Improve energy efficiency in an organisation
So what are the key elements that improve energy efficiency in an organisation. In no particular order, there are 5 key factors that all contribute to the improvement of energy efficiency in any organisation.
Firstly education. It’s a fact that people generally react positively if they know what they are dealing with, and what the cost is to their business and the environment. It is also important in the area of energy improvement that staff still believePower BI Dashboard they have control over their surroundings and personal environment.
From empirical evidence garnered from a variety of installations it can be expected that a committed workforce can generally achieve a 5 -10% increase in energy efficiency if given the right training and information. If these crucial savings are to be harnessed then the business must provide give staff the information to act on. Energy dashboards in public staff areas can give constant feedback of the effect of staff behaviour on company energy consumption.
Again from experience, it is important that there is a sense of belief they staff still have some control over their working environment or the feeling of collaboration will dissipate and engagement will reduce.
So while accurate and timely information is the life-blood of Facilities managers and energy decision-makers, people like to see results from an important programme and especially if they are part of it. Energy dashboards provide this all-important feedback of results to employees and in the case of B2C business the consumer or visitor.
An important motivator for employees is company pride. Staff like to have pride in the company they work for, its products and the intangible perhaps more altruistic activities it is involved in. If a company is genuinely making strides in energy and carbon reduction and the staff have a strong bond with the results of the programme, pride in the company is increased and staff happier and motivated to make even more progress. Savings are reinforced and become sustainable.
Summary
An intuitive display dashboard, tailored to the application, can be a very powerful tool helping to enable:
Staff engagement and cultural change
Engagement with customers and their perceptions
Engagement of the senior management team
Management performance reporting enabling more informed management decisions
Assists with sustainable energy savings and CO2 reduction
Gives web-based secure access to information accessible 24/7 on any device able to support a web-browser.
Tim Bartholomew is managing Director of Next Energy Management. Next Energy Management is an ISO9001:2008 accredited energy management company, specialising in the design, application, installation and commissioning of Management Dashboard building energy management systems (BEMS).