In recent months, we’ve seen a large segment of the workforce adjust to being remote, first because of government mandates related to COVID-19 and now because business leaders everywhere are opting to keep employees safe, healthy, and socially distanced. This sudden work-from-home transition hasn’t just upended lives; it’s upended expenses, including energy expenses.
Across the country, millions of American employees are seeing higher energy bills as their costs rise for use of air conditioning, computers, lighting, kitchen appliances, and more. Even as people everywhere face furloughs, salary cuts, or worse, our own research shows a 10-15% increase in energy bills over last year. That’s as much as an average of $37 more a month in some cities.
What’s timely and relevant now is meeting employees where they are — in the home — and offering benefits that make a meaningful impact.
As the Senior Director of Partnerships at Arcadia, I see this as an enormous opportunity for businesses to offer a new benefit to employees: clean energy. We’re working with companies of all sizes to offer this perk to their teams, and, in doing so, ease employees’ financial burden while reducing corporate emissions and empowering staff to do something good for the environment.
Danny Ellis, who is CEO of SkySpecs, a wind energy technology company, recently partnered with Arcadia to offer clean energy to his employees. “We thought Arcadia was a pretty cool way to say our team is both helping the wind industry and powered by wind,” said Ellis. And the SkySpecs team has been pleased with the new workplace perk. “As someone who believes in renewables, having an easy platform to source wind energy for our home is great,” says Jeremy Lindbauer, an enterprise sales representative with the company. “Having SkySpecs offer clean energy with Arcadia as a company benefit is awesome.”
Ready to partner?
Send us a noteWhen a business decides to work with Arcadia and offer this benefit, it’s my team’s job to make it as easy as possible for them, and at no cost. We help them create marketing materials and work together to decide how to best promote clean energy, whether it’s through a lunch-and-learn, an internal meeting, or a company-wide email. Employees each receive a promotional code so they can sign up for Arcadia quickly and easily under the same business account.
We then track the energy and savings for the employees and for the company. The business is able to use that information in their marketing materials and sustainability reports and can even add the offset to their scope 3 emissions reporting (that’s where businesses report offset projects indirectly related to their business, like employees’ energy usage when they’re working from home). Because we’re the first nationwide energy services platform, this is a perk that’s relevant to people in every state, so it doesn’t matter where a team is.
It’s becoming increasingly clear that the working-from-home trend will stick around as long as the pandemic lasts, and likely well beyond that time. Many businesses (Twitter, Square, and Facebook, for starters) have already announced that remote work will continue indefinitely. And workers themselves are expressing an interest in staying home. According to a recent Gallup poll, three out of five US workers would opt to continue remote work.
With that in mind, perks such as commuter benefits, foosball tables, and cold brew on tap suddenly feel dated. What’s timely and relevant now is meeting employees where they are — in the home — and offering benefits that make a meaningful impact. At Arcadia, we believe that a corporate pivot toward clean energy makes a powerful statement. It shows that you care about your business and your employees, and that you’re invested in making a difference, long-term, in the environment around you.
Want to learn more about reducing your company’s carbon footprint through our partnerships? Reach out today to partners@arcadia.com to discuss a tailored program for your company.
