Belgian Workshop
The weight of the words, the shock of the pictures
11th September 2007
In September 2007, the Belgian participants of Energy Trophy attended their first seminar, dedicated to raising employees’ awareness. The seminar was organised by the Brussels’ energy and environment administration.
Four presentations for a global vision:
The first presentation was theoretical, but still focused on the core of Energy Trophy’s business: changing behaviours. A company trainer exposed how to deal with the staff’s resistance to change, which is the main obstacle to overcome when you set up an awareness campaign.
The second presentation gave concrete examples of tools that can be used in a campaign. Illustrations, posters, tag lines, speaking figures and projects of companies and administrations that had gotten an eco-label were presented. The links to the different materials were provided to the participants.
In the next contribution two people gave testimonies on the campaigns they were leading in their companies. One of them was a four star hotel, where a “green committee” was created, which included members of each section of the hotel (reception, administration, technicians,…) and decided on a global action plan for the hotel. This led to behaviour changes, but also to small structural ones (economical shower heads, efficient lamps, no more plastic cups) that had quite an impact on the hotel energy consumption.
The second one was the Belgian railway company, which made a deal with the Belgian government and agreed to reduce their energy consumption by 7.5% before 2012. An internal campaign was organised, and some employees volunteered to become “energy watchers” and play a key role in the saving process.
The fourth presentation were the most popular: questions were flying, and people were taking lots of notes.
Whatever you do in your own training, make sure that your participants get concrete examples and testimonies. If the APERe had to do it again, we would probably add a step with a sample campaign plan, to help people get on with their own campaign.
Good to know for the next edition…