The IIntegration of sustainability into company technologyas well as in your work and development plans, does not happen automatically. Cannot be done without careful planning. Nor can their integration into the IT strategy be planned without taking into account the company’s human capital and the role they play in it. In other words, sustainable IT technologies and processes cannot be adopted without taking people into account. That’s why it’s important to plan carefully how to make sustainability a part of company technology.
By achieving this, progress is also made in getting the entire company to embrace sustainability as a culture. But to achieve this, it is necessary to prioritize and obtain support from the different departments and managers of the company. Therefore, it is not an easy task, and it requires a lot of work and dedication. Until now, only 34% of companies include sustainable technology as part of the roadmap that their managers discuss.
39% have a governance team in charge of overseeing the implementation and deployment of sustainable technology, but only half of them have CIOs integrated into these teams. In addition, it seems that support for a sustainable IT culture in companies still has insufficient support.
Only 31% of companies offer incentives to employees who use technology in their work in a more sustainable way, and incentives are very important to achieve this. According to this report, they can change the behavior of workers, and create the right culture, in addition to ensuring that technology is used in a way that meets the sustainability objectives of the company. In increasing the level of sustainability in everything related to technology, CIOs can help a lot, as they can follow several guidelines to establish a green culture in technology in the company. Among them, the following
Appeal to the entire company, but know who to manage the change with
Sustainability is achieved by working as a team. This means that CIOs will have to appeal to the entire company for support to promote sustainable initiatives. But to create the team in charge of putting them into practice, the right professionals must be selected. It must also be made clear who has the deciding vote in that field.
To be successful in creating a culture of sustainability in a company, including its IT department, it is necessary to take an approach that goes from management to employees, and vice versa. All workers, regardless of their level, can identify areas and aspects in which to improve sustainability. In addition, the IT department can take more decisive steps towards sustainability in everything related to its department. For example, creating a process to optimize laptops for longer life cycles. They can also decide in what ways the company can be more efficient in its use of the cloud and data centers.
At the management level, those responsible should review the issues related to the material they use and their consumption. For example, review the use they make of energy, their greenhouse gas emissions, and the electronic material they waste. With this they could launch a systematic review program as a basis, setting objectives and allocating budget to projects that can help achieve them.
On the other hand, although it is critical to achieve a culture focused on sustainability in the company, it is also critical to involve the right people so that the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions do not go unnoticed. In other words, they know how to focus on the most important points and not just focus on the most visible: energy consumption at the company level or the carbon footprint of the server room.
Start a network of advocates
Creating a sustainable IT culture requires having staff focused on the responsible use of technology in the company. To do this, IT managers need to set up a network of sustainability advocates in the company. They can be members of the IT team, and of course, the company’s Sustainability Manager, a figure that cannot be missing from the organizational chart.
In other words, it is necessary to create a small group that works to raise awareness, to train and hold workshops, and to talk about success stories. They can even schedule talks and lectures from outside experts to motivate their peers and subordinates.
Making sustainability crucial in decision making
Sustainability initiatives are changing all areas of a company. Of course, the IT one. Also decision making. Until now, costs have practically been the drivers of decision making in many companies. But both managers and those who are the pillars of the organization have to begin to integrate sustainability into it. Of course, without failing to take costs into account either, but without having almost all the weight.
take concrete steps
Developing a green technology culture requires that leaders identify areas of the company that could be improved. For example, non-production cloud environments where engineers develop and test products. Many companies have these environments running continuously. That means they have many servers running. Sometimes more than those of the production environment itself.
There’s no need to keep a non-production environment running non-stop, because activity in them typically only happens during business hours. Optimizing your energy use takes some effort, but it pays off. It allows to significantly reduce energy consumption, among other things.
Unveil the potential of sustainability for innovation
One of the problems IT managers face when committing to sustainability is resistance to change. Many believe that they will have to make difficult changes as a result of implementing sustainable IT initiatives.
They believe they will have less access to high-performance technology, and those who work on projects that require a lot of server power fear having to deal with how they run their most demanding projects. They also think that productivity in the company will go down, because they will have limited access to high-performance technology. Therefore, in order to launch sustainability initiatives successfully, IT managers need to have soft skills, and use them with employees and managers.
IT managers need to recognize that there are concerns when it comes to implementing sustainability measures in IT, and they also need to consider the sustainability roadmap as an opportunity to innovate. When trade-offs appear that need to be addressed, it is an opportunity to be creative in overcoming them, and offer solutions that are more cost-effective and effective, while also reducing your environmental carbon footprint.
Take responsibility for the measures
Leaders who want to succeed in sustainability need to be held accountable for their actions, and link sustainability to the compensation that managers receive is part of it. It is a measure that more and more executives of companies that can be considered sustainable, or in which they are moving decisively towards achieving it, are taking.
In this way they will be able to demonstrate how important sustainability is to them, to the point that what they earn will depend on the progress they make in the company in this regard. This point is going to be key for the rest of the organization to understand that the company, with its managers at the helm, is serious about achieving the highest level of sustainability possible, or at least meeting the objectives set in regarding sustainability in IT and/or in the company.
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