As a tribute to Earth Day, which is this Friday, April 22nd, we decided to share some of the things we’ve done at Fruition Interactive that’s not only good for the environment, but profitable.
In part one, we discussed the benefits of switching to a Cloud Computing solution to reduce your carbon footprint and costs. Well, here’s one more thing you can do to help your business go green while boosting your bottom line.
Go Remote
One could argue the greenest improvement in the workplace has been the evolution of telecommuting, which is now possible thanks to technologies like cloud computing, online collaboration tools and apps like Skype.
Working from home not only reduces traffic and pollution, it reduces costs. Best of all, it increases employee productivity.
Think about it.
Do you constantly work late and on your weekends? Sure, everyone does it once and awhile, but perhaps the reason is you’re not getting enough done at work. The culprit: office interruptions. When do you get the most work done? If you’re like most people it’s when nobody else is around.
At Fruition, our office is powered exclusively by wind, solar and low-impact hydro electrical energy, provided by Bullfrog Green Energy. However, we also give employees the choice to work remotely.
Our phone system runs on Voice over IP (VoIP). We manage projects using Assembla.com. We make presentations using Yugma.com, a web conferencing tool. We get proposals approved using an elegant online e-signature service called Echosign.com. We even invoice clients by email and give them the option to pay using PayPal.com.
Not only does working remotely using these tools have considerable green benefits, it makes our employees happier. They save money, can work on their own terms and produce good results.
However, employees aren’t the only one’s reaping the rewards. According to Sun Microsystems, their telecommuting program not only saved $387 million in IT and office space costs, it also reduced annual CO2 emissions by about 28-thousand-pounds.
That’s just good business.
Stay tuned for part 3 tomorrow.
About the Author
Mitch Fanning is VP of Fruition Interactive. He’s spent 11 years working with businesses of all sizes, from global brands to Canada’s fastest growing web start-ups ranked in the PROFIT 100.