Grey Matter Important for Green Matters
Grey Matter Important for Green Matters
January 14, 2008: According to the Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), 2008 must be the year of the sustainable workplace, as while sustainability is now an important touchstone for the ICT industry, it claims that a much broader vision of the term is required.
AIIA CEO Sheryle Moon says that traditional ideas about sustainability are becoming too limiting in a business era depleted by the brain-drain, and highlights that sustainability means more than carbon offsetting.
“Retaining skills must become an integral part of the way that we think about environmental design in ICT, alongside all the things that we usually think of when we consider sustainable industry practice,” said Moon.
The association says traditional concepts of sustainability are important, as the ICT industry still contributes around 1.52 percent of Australia’s total carbon emissions. This ensures it will play an important role in meeting future carbon output targets.
“However, while the reduction of ‘power in and carbon out’ remains the current focus of world media, the ICT industry will need to think much more laterally about the concept of sustainability in order to remain economically viable and intellectually relevant into the future,” said Moon.
“There are clear threats to the sustainability of our industry that need to be addressed, and most of them are being driven by three factors: falling ICT student enrolments, an increasingly competitive labour market, and the imminent retirement of the baby boomer generation.”
The association claims that these factors are a potent combination, and potentially lethal to the skills that ICT relies upon. It says that to prevent ICT sustainability slipping Australia needs strong leadership and integrated programs that will transform the nature of industry workplaces.
“By necessity, the design of sustainable organisations must move beyond environmental and efficiency concerns to embrace the challenge of changing workforce demographics,” said Moon.
“Foremost as an industry, ICT will need to address the health of our workplaces to attract and retain the skills that are needed in the future.”
Job stress and poor management practices have become all too common in modern business according to the AIIA, and the results are starting to impact on business in the form of absenteeism and high staff turnover.
“Designing healthier workplaces will mean a return to the age-old management principles of establishing trust, communicating a clear vision, and setting goals and objectives that align with both corporate and individual values,” said Moon. “What the industry needs are new ideas to deliver these values to our workplaces and change them for the better.
“We cannot afford to sit idly by while problems that we have long been aware of eat into our most valuable resource, the skilled workforce. 2008 must become the year of the sustainable workplace.”
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