The Environmental Impact of Home Working on Employers

It is mandatory for large employers in the UK to report their energy usage and greenhouse gas emissions so that the government can monitor the UK’s impact on climate change. Consequently, businesses are always trying to reduce their CO2 emissions.

For a workforce in an office, tracking energy usage was simply a case of monitoring meter readings for a sustainability report. Now when an employer produces a sustainability report, they need to include the impact of employees now working from home.

On paper, it appears there are environmental benefits that come with having more employees working from their home e.g. less commuting producing less air pollution. But it is harder to quantify the CO2 emissions from an employee working from home rather than in the office. Furthermore, many employees may now have increased carbon emissions from working in homes that are energy inefficient.

If employers want to appear proactive in their decarbonisation efforts, they should be assisting their employees in making their home workspaces more efficient. Since heating is the number one energy drain in domestic properties (and the biggest contributor to air pollution), the best way to make an employee’s home more energy efficient is to make the heating system more efficient.

ThermaFY offer a heating efficiency survey that employers can purchase for their employees as an opt-in service for the fixing of inefficiencies in their heating. A more efficient heating system runs cleaner and requires less fuel, producing less emissions. Employees will stay warm while helping contribute towards the UK’s decarbonisation efforts.

If you are interested, the tool below allows you to calculate the carbon footprint of you or your business: