Sustainable Home-Working with LSE Consulting
The story behind our collaboration with LSE Consulting, A commission by BT and Phoenix Group.
A widespread shift to flexible home-working is a significant social trend. We’re right to be questioning its effect on our wellbeing and productivity, but what about the impact on the environment? In Summer 2020, we noted how few organisations were exploring sustainability as an outcome of our new working practices. Our founder, James Elfer, shared that early thinking in this short video on social media:
After a brief dive into the research, we realised that home-working has the potential to make a significant difference to our carbon emissions. Most importantly, we found that the effect is variable depending on the actions of organisations and their employees.
This is a challenge tailor-made for behavioural science, and it starts with two questions: which behaviours matter most when we’re working from home, and what interventions have been effective at influencing them for the better? To find answers, we’re delighted to be collaborating with LSE Consulting in a project led by Dr Laura Giurge at MoreThanNow and London Business School, and Dr Ganga Shreedhar and Dr Kate Laffan at the London School of Economics.
Sustainable Home-Working Report
Identifying the behaviours that matter most, and the interventions that have influenced them for the better.
Our research will be open source and is due in March 2021. It will provide the evidence needed for organisations to take effective action on sustainable home-working, and for that, we would like to say a heartfelt thank you to our two FTSE 100 supporters, BT and Phoenix Group.
Of course, this is only a step forward on a long-term journey. We’ll move to Phase 2 as soon as the research is complete, where we’ll begin to design and test interventions within partner organisations. The precedents and policies set in the next 12 months are important for many reasons, but their impact on the environment will leave a lasting legacy. We’re going to use all the tools of behavioural science to make sure it’s a good one.