Latest / The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers / The Digital Sustainability Blueprint 🌍💻 w/ Atos and National Grid

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The Digital Sustainability Blueprint 🌍💻 w/ Atos and National Grid · The DEX Show: A Show for IT Change Makers

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome it change Makers to the deck show with Tim
0:05
Speaker 1: Flower and Tom McGraw. Let's get into it.
0:09
Speaker 2: Hello, change makers. It is as you may have guessed,
0:13
Speaker 2: as you may have noticed, I should say, January, January
0:17
Speaker 2: twenty twenty five. Who can believe it? Tim Flower? Can
0:21
Speaker 2: you believe it?
0:22
Speaker 3: I can't believe it. You know, one thing I find
0:24
Speaker 3: as I get older, the years tick by faster and faster.
0:28
Speaker 3: Twenty twenty five.
0:29
Speaker 2: Now do you have Tim any New Year's resolutions? Are
0:33
Speaker 2: you a New Year's resolution guy?
0:35
Speaker 3: Yeah? You know I used to be, and then I
0:37
Speaker 3: found that I don't know, lack of willpower, lack of stamina.
0:41
Speaker 3: I don't know what it is. I kind of I
0:44
Speaker 3: don't normally do it. I think I take care of
0:46
Speaker 3: your health and make the conscious decision to be happy.
0:49
Speaker 3: Those are my two. Okay, okay, so life resolutions. Yeah,
0:54
Speaker 3: life resolutions very sensible. And I just I ask because
0:57
Speaker 3: I just wonder if some of our it's out there
1:01
Speaker 3: might have the professional New Years resolution to.
1:05
Speaker 2: Be more sustainable in their IT services and if that
1:09
Speaker 2: sounds like you're if it sounds like something you would
1:11
Speaker 2: you would like to do. Regardless of resolutions, we've got
1:14
Speaker 2: a We've got a great pair of guests to speak
1:17
Speaker 2: to today. We've got David Welling it sustainability governance lead
1:22
Speaker 2: a National Grid. First of all, Hello, welcome David. Lovely
1:25
Speaker 2: to have you on the show for the first time.
1:26
Speaker 2: How are you very good?
1:28
Speaker 4: Thank you Thomas, and thank you for the intro. Yeah,
1:30
Speaker 4: I'm doing really well and it's a good time to
1:33
Speaker 4: be in sustainability.
1:34
Speaker 2: It is indeed, it is indeed. And we've got Sebastian
1:37
Speaker 2: vi Burt, a business owner for Sustainable Workplace. Also from
1:41
Speaker 2: great partners at next Thing a great partners to the
1:43
Speaker 2: Deck show. We've had people from them on various times
1:46
Speaker 2: and that's some at us. Hi Hi set paidon Hi Hi.
1:49
Speaker 5: I'm great, thank you, yeah, yeah, looking forward to this discussion.
1:53
Speaker 2: Always a pleasure to have Adams on the show. I
1:55
Speaker 2: have to say I've always enjoyed it. Welcome both of you.
1:57
Speaker 2: But David, let's start with you. We are, as I
2:00
Speaker 2: have indicated, going to be exploring together the four of
2:03
Speaker 2: us sustainability in twenty twenty five. And could you just
2:07
Speaker 2: tell us a bit about your role maybe at National
2:09
Speaker 2: Grid and the significance of sustainability and it level inside
2:14
Speaker 2: the organization.
2:15
Speaker 4: Yeah, of course. I mean, for those of you that
2:18
Speaker 4: don't know, National Grid runs the transmission infrastructure in the
2:23
Speaker 4: UK and various different things in the US as well,
2:26
Speaker 4: and we're really at the heart of the energy transition
2:30
Speaker 4: to net zero. So everything we do is focused around
2:34
Speaker 4: how we can decarbonize the grid as quickly as possible
2:38
Speaker 4: in order to provide green energy for the for the
2:41
Speaker 4: UK and the US. So within it, we obviously have
2:44
Speaker 4: a critical role to play. We use a lot of
2:48
Speaker 4: electricity in our data centers, we process a lot of
2:52
Speaker 4: data and we have to do that in an efficient
2:55
Speaker 4: way as possible in order to get the benefits that
2:59
Speaker 4: we need for our for our rate payers because we
3:01
Speaker 4: are essentially, you know, funded by the public. So yeah,
3:07
Speaker 4: National Grid has a huge role to play in the
3:09
Speaker 4: energy transition and it has a key role to play
3:12
Speaker 4: and making sure that we deliver that as efficiently as possible.
3:17
Speaker 2: I should be I should be clear, David, we haven't
3:20
Speaker 2: invited you and seb On just simultanated. Just coincidentally, you
3:23
Speaker 2: are partnering around sustainability, so I wonder if you could
3:26
Speaker 2: give some insights into that partnership between National Grid and ATOS.
3:31
Speaker 4: Yeah. Absolutely, Seb Seb and I were introduced through through
3:37
Speaker 4: our customer success leads and we kind of hit it
3:41
Speaker 4: off really well straight from the off, just talking about
3:44
Speaker 4: how we can make national grids more sustainable through the
3:48
Speaker 4: services that ATOS was providing, and Seb Seb sort of
3:52
Speaker 4: loop me into a conversation that they were having around
3:54
Speaker 4: a research paper, the one that we're going to discuss today,
3:58
Speaker 4: and and it kind of all picked off from there.
4:00
Speaker 4: So a fantastic research paper with some really good data.
4:05
Speaker 4: But it was just really good to talk to people
4:08
Speaker 4: who understand and we're passionate about sustainability within the IT
4:14
Speaker 4: sector because it's not It's not something that's talked about
4:18
Speaker 4: as much as I feel that it should be. Considering
4:21
Speaker 4: the amount of impact that the IT sector has from
4:23
Speaker 4: a manufacturing impact and from an energy usage point of view,
4:27
Speaker 4: we should be more centrally discussed when it comes to,
4:31
Speaker 4: you know, the impact positively that we can have.
4:34
Speaker 2: It's ted up very well there, Seb mentioning you have
4:38
Speaker 2: a research paper, not only in your friendship and collaboration,
4:42
Speaker 2: but the research paper, which I think was released quite
4:45
Speaker 2: late last year, right, maybe if you could tell us
4:49
Speaker 2: a bit about that. What was a primary approach and
4:51
Speaker 2: the objective behind that.
4:52
Speaker 5: First of all, yeah, so I think the objective is
4:58
Speaker 5: that we are ninety SI this is complete in ATOS
5:01
Speaker 5: and we we've helped customers transform the way they support
5:09
Speaker 5: their employees by moving them into a proactive way of support,
5:14
Speaker 5: more employee engagement focused word of support. So we've transformed
5:19
Speaker 5: dozens of customers, millions of users are using our using
5:23
Speaker 5: next thing amongst our customers, and our customers basically said, okay,
5:28
Speaker 5: you've done it. Now you've transformed us. It's fantastic. So
5:32
Speaker 5: what's next? So what next was? Well, we asked them
5:37
Speaker 5: what is the key value that really mattered to you
5:40
Speaker 5: that you need help on? And pretty much everyone came
5:43
Speaker 5: back with sustainability as being a major major issue that
5:47
Speaker 5: they want some support on. So we decided to invest
5:51
Speaker 5: in that space. And the first thing that we did
5:54
Speaker 5: is to make sure we can help them, we need
5:57
Speaker 5: to understand the data. We need to understand what is
6:01
Speaker 5: the problem and what challenge we are trying to overcome.
6:09
Speaker 5: The first thing was, so where is that data? So
6:15
Speaker 5: for example, if you google when how often do I
6:18
Speaker 5: need to refresh my laptop estate? For example, what you'll
6:23
Speaker 5: find is that. The more recent information is a paper
6:29
Speaker 5: that was written in two thousand and nine for only
6:33
Speaker 5: thirty thousand devices, that effectively said, you need to refresh
6:38
Speaker 5: your laptops every three years. And the whole industry, the
6:43
Speaker 5: literally the hundreds of millions of laptop out there, the
6:45
Speaker 5: thousands of organizations have gone all right, then every three
6:49
Speaker 5: years we replace, we replace our laptops, burying in mind
6:55
Speaker 5: how much the technology has evolved. You know, we knew
6:59
Speaker 5: that there was some that we needed to do. We
7:01
Speaker 5: needed to collect the data, and we have the data.
7:04
Speaker 5: As I just said, you know, we manage a million devices,
7:07
Speaker 5: We have our facilities with our data scientists who are
7:12
Speaker 5: processing data on a consistent basis. So once we've decided
7:17
Speaker 5: that's something that we really want to do, we want
7:19
Speaker 5: to contribute to a society in that way by creating
7:23
Speaker 5: this Fusions paper, sharing it so everyone can have a
7:27
Speaker 5: look at it. We needed to analyze the data. So
7:31
Speaker 5: the first thing we did we went to see our
7:33
Speaker 5: next thing team, ask them, you know, how often do
7:37
Speaker 5: people we start their laptop, how long do they spend
7:41
Speaker 5: on their devices? What's the screen brightness on the devices?
7:45
Speaker 5: You know, what information, what insight could we get from
7:47
Speaker 5: that information, we went to our Intune SICM team, who
7:53
Speaker 5: managed four million devices. We ask them, how often do
7:56
Speaker 5: we have incidents? What happened to devices since after those
7:59
Speaker 5: three years, you know, is that other device is certainly
8:02
Speaker 5: breaking left, right and center. What's happening then? And then
8:07
Speaker 5: we wanted to have the full life cycles. We hooked
8:10
Speaker 5: up with one of our as a disposal partner and
8:14
Speaker 5: we asked them what happened at the end of the
8:17
Speaker 5: life cycle, what's the state of those devices? What can
8:22
Speaker 5: you tell us that could be useful. We were really
8:27
Speaker 5: excited about this paper, and then we started to speak
8:29
Speaker 5: to our next thing friends and they said, oh, we're
8:33
Speaker 5: also working on a study as well, and we've got
8:36
Speaker 5: twenty million devices and we've got tons of data and
8:40
Speaker 5: not the same data, different kind of data. Well, that's
8:43
Speaker 5: interesting too, so let's combine them and all together. We
8:50
Speaker 5: effectively ended up with thirty plus data points and you know,
8:55
Speaker 5: pretty much all of them. Bearing in mind there was
8:58
Speaker 5: there's been nothing very much so far was super interesting,
9:02
Speaker 5: and the idea was, can we create the kind of
9:05
Speaker 5: the bible for sustainable workplace where people would come back
9:09
Speaker 5: and use it to make make more sustainability decisions.
9:14
Speaker 3: So sab as you can imagine, next thing does our
9:17
Speaker 3: own papers we've got, We've done research over the years.
9:21
Speaker 3: Sometimes the data comes back and supports our our thoughts
9:26
Speaker 3: that we've got already, and sometimes it conflicts. I'm always
9:29
Speaker 3: fascinated to look at the results as surveys come in
9:32
Speaker 3: like this and and research and studies. What was the
9:36
Speaker 3: most let's stick into the data a little bit, what
9:38
Speaker 3: was the most surprising or impact for finding to come
9:41
Speaker 3: from that research that you might not have expected to see,
9:44
Speaker 3: what conflicted with what you were thinking already.
9:48
Speaker 5: I think I was expecting to find out that we
9:53
Speaker 5: were quite a wasteful industry at all. I was expecting that,
9:58
Speaker 5: but I was surprised much how waysful we were and
10:02
Speaker 5: the opportunities we have to improve. So if I give
10:05
Speaker 5: you one of the example, one of the data points
10:08
Speaker 5: from our its disposal partner who found that only twelve
10:13
Speaker 5: percent of the devices that are processed for recycling actually
10:19
Speaker 5: cannot work on other world eighty eight percent of the
10:23
Speaker 5: devices that they have do not know life cycled, there's
10:28
Speaker 5: still life in them. I was I didn't expect such
10:33
Speaker 5: a such a law number. From another example from a
10:39
Speaker 5: usage perspective, and I think the number is sixteen percent.
10:44
Speaker 5: Out of the millions of devices that we manage, sixteen
10:48
Speaker 5: percent run for over twenty three hours a day. Or
10:52
Speaker 5: in other words, people don't switch off there laptop right
10:55
Speaker 5: as might be some guilty people on this podcast here. Yeah,
10:58
Speaker 5: I don't know, but it's very common, very common thing.
11:02
Speaker 5: So when you start thinking sixteen percent, yeah, there must
11:07
Speaker 5: be lots of opportunities to improve.
11:11
Speaker 3: And David, from a customer standpoint, you're managing an environment.
11:14
Speaker 3: Let's flip it around. What data points from the research
11:17
Speaker 3: resonated the most with you or were most expected and
11:20
Speaker 3: the most likely to help influence or support your sustainability
11:25
Speaker 3: strategy in it?
11:27
Speaker 4: Well? Well, first off, Tim, I was just really disappointed
11:33
Speaker 4: that it had taken at us and next thing to
11:38
Speaker 4: scratch below the surface and say, why do we get
11:42
Speaker 4: rid of a laptop after three years? No one had
11:45
Speaker 4: done that in the best part of two decades. Like,
11:49
Speaker 4: it's absurd that a data driven industry which has really
11:54
Speaker 4: tight margins, had never looked at how long a laptop
11:58
Speaker 4: actually lives for. Individually, they're not expensive assets, but when
12:03
Speaker 4: we run thirty thousand of them across our company. The
12:07
Speaker 4: difference between buying a new one every three years and
12:09
Speaker 4: every five years there's a lot of money and no
12:12
Speaker 4: one had actually done the research. So first off, I
12:16
Speaker 4: just wanted to say thank you for actually doing it,
12:20
Speaker 4: because all business should be data driven, like especially the
12:24
Speaker 4: IT sector. Wasting money is not something anyone should be
12:30
Speaker 4: doing in any business. Yet the majority of companies were
12:34
Speaker 4: getting rid of laptops after three years because of a
12:37
Speaker 4: paper that was written on a really small set of
12:41
Speaker 4: data a really long time ago, and we've all been
12:46
Speaker 4: wasting money and effort since then because of that assumption
12:50
Speaker 4: and no one had questioned it. That to me is
12:52
Speaker 4: completely unacceptable. So it's just good to see people partnering
12:56
Speaker 4: up to challenge those socially accepted norms because sometimes those
13:01
Speaker 4: socially accepted norms are there because nobody has dared to
13:05
Speaker 4: ask the question, so we should and to get answer
13:11
Speaker 4: your question. Sorry, Jim, So, my my key finding was
13:17
Speaker 4: really around the energy usage potential and the opportunity there.
13:22
Speaker 4: So being from national grid, we find energy quite important
13:28
Speaker 4: and it's one of the critical things we need to
13:31
Speaker 4: overhaul in order to get to net zero. And Serb
13:35
Speaker 4: inviting me to talk at the Digital Workplace Summit, the
13:38
Speaker 4: Gartner Summit last year. And when when when he shared
13:43
Speaker 4: the paper, he asked me if I could explain, uh,
13:49
Speaker 4: the carbon intensity of the energy grid in two minutes. Now, Now,
13:54
Speaker 4: that is a subject that people have written multiple thesis
13:57
Speaker 4: is on, and it is is a highly academic subject.
14:02
Speaker 4: And in condensing it down to two minutes, I realized
14:06
Speaker 4: that laptops that are left on. So let's say that
14:11
Speaker 4: statistic we've got of sixteen percent of all devices are
14:14
Speaker 4: left running twenty four x seven. Well, what if those
14:18
Speaker 4: twenty four x seven laptops that are left plugged in
14:20
Speaker 4: and turned on were actually responding to signals from the
14:23
Speaker 4: grid like your car does, or like your home battery does,
14:29
Speaker 4: to use more or less energy based on the time
14:31
Speaker 4: of day and the carbon intensity and the load on
14:33
Speaker 4: the grid. What if they were doing that by design?
14:37
Speaker 4: What's the scope of the possibility there? And when you
14:41
Speaker 4: look at how many laptops there are in the UK,
14:44
Speaker 4: it's large. Yet the most technically enabled internet connected device
14:49
Speaker 4: you have in your home, your laptop doesn't respond to
14:55
Speaker 4: the energy demands of the grid. Yet your car does,
14:57
Speaker 4: and your home battery does. And I mean my washing
15:02
Speaker 4: machine does all of these things. These Internet of things
15:05
Speaker 4: are using all of this data, and yet laptops weren't.
15:09
Speaker 4: So it was a huge missed opportunity in my eyes,
15:13
Speaker 4: that laptops could be contributing to helping us decarbonize and
15:17
Speaker 4: they're not. Yeah, that was that was That was one
15:21
Speaker 4: of the key ones for me.
15:22
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll expand a little bit on your earlier commentary.
15:26
Speaker 3: You and I could share the same soapbox of railing
15:30
Speaker 3: against the system. I've been in nineteen since nineteen eighty eight,
15:34
Speaker 3: data driven decision making, and you know what, we failed
15:37
Speaker 3: for so long. And I would argue that some of
15:39
Speaker 3: our best partners are the hardware vendors, but it's not
15:42
Speaker 3: in their best interests. They've got all the data, but
15:44
Speaker 3: it's not in their best interest because they want to
15:45
Speaker 3: sell more boxes, and we as consumers and customers, we
15:49
Speaker 3: only have our little piece of the pie, right. We
15:51
Speaker 3: don't have all of the data we would need to
15:53
Speaker 3: make those decisions. So I'm that's part of why I
15:55
Speaker 3: love working X think is twenty million devices and growing.
15:58
Speaker 3: We've got so much data, and with a great partner
16:00
Speaker 3: like Atos, we can go mine that data and help
16:03
Speaker 3: customers like you. So I've got to maybe I'll call
16:06
Speaker 3: it a two part question, one the same question for
16:08
Speaker 3: both of you. So Seb, let's flip back over to
16:12
Speaker 3: you sustainability. When you talk to employees about sustainability, about
16:19
Speaker 3: turning their laptop off, about emptying their inbox, about all
16:22
Speaker 3: of the things that they would need to do for
16:25
Speaker 3: sustainability goals, they're they're inherently at odds with the outcomes,
16:31
Speaker 3: the positive benefits of the outcomes. Right, sustainability feels like
16:35
Speaker 3: a chore or an inconvenience. What do you think is
16:39
Speaker 3: the key to striking the right balance getting the benefit
16:42
Speaker 3: without being too onerous.
16:45
Speaker 5: Yeah, let's face it, the most sustainable solution from an
16:50
Speaker 5: IT perspective is to have to give everyone a ten
16:54
Speaker 5: year old laptop with motive energy setting the lower screen
16:59
Speaker 5: bright as no monitors. But that would be an awful
17:04
Speaker 5: employee experience. And I think across all of the sustainability
17:09
Speaker 5: initiative where we've seen success. For example, electric cars became
17:14
Speaker 5: successful because Tesla created a fantastic experience yet also made
17:20
Speaker 5: it sustainable. And that's what we've got to do in
17:23
Speaker 5: this industry. We've got to do the same thing. Can
17:25
Speaker 5: we deliver sustainable laptops which are completely we sustainable laptops
17:36
Speaker 5: which are which deliver great experience. One of the outcome
17:43
Speaker 5: of the study, you know, you talked, you talked about
17:46
Speaker 5: the employees and the chores. One of the outcomes of
17:49
Speaker 5: the study is we looked at fifty different parameters within
17:52
Speaker 5: your laptop which all have an impact on the electricity
17:55
Speaker 5: usage of the laptop. And of the fifty which is
18:00
Speaker 5: which is you know, everything that can drive the usage
18:03
Speaker 5: of the laptop, only forty percent are reinforceable by automation
18:11
Speaker 5: and corporation kind of policy type stuff. So the vast
18:15
Speaker 5: majority you have to get employees fully engaged in that process.
18:22
Speaker 5: What that means is you you need to we need
18:27
Speaker 5: to turn it around. So as a night leader, you
18:29
Speaker 5: need to think about how we can get employees really
18:32
Speaker 5: engage with what we are trying to achieve and make
18:35
Speaker 5: them proud. I think that is that is the key
18:39
Speaker 5: employe experience target here. If you can make your employees proud,
18:44
Speaker 5: you're improving your pro experience and you're delivering sustainability. What
18:48
Speaker 5: we've we've built is a newsletter that you get every
18:53
Speaker 5: month as a as a user and it gives you
18:58
Speaker 5: a very simple dashboard which shows you gives your score
19:02
Speaker 5: in terms of your employee experience. The DX score using
19:05
Speaker 5: next Think data gives you a green score with microaction
19:11
Speaker 5: on how to improve, and gives you a society score
19:14
Speaker 5: that shows all of the good stuff that you're doing
19:17
Speaker 5: to improve kind of society as well in kind of
19:21
Speaker 5: the broader sustainability sense. By doing that, we get employees
19:26
Speaker 5: fully engaged in those microaccents. I'm not schures anymore. Team
19:30
Speaker 5: they become something that gets points. We built some gamifications
19:35
Speaker 5: as well so they can be in the top ten
19:37
Speaker 5: percent ranking, and it becomes we turn it on it
19:41
Speaker 5: on its said.
19:42
Speaker 3: So yeah, I think it's very similar to how we
19:46
Speaker 3: advise customers to switch from being reactive to productive. Right.
19:50
Speaker 3: It doesn't want to change. They like being the firefighter,
19:52
Speaker 3: they like being the hero when things are broken, but
19:55
Speaker 3: they need to take pride in deploying stable, reliable, predictable,
19:59
Speaker 3: and a higher deck score. That change in thinking, I
20:03
Speaker 3: think applies to both parts of the equation. David, how
20:07
Speaker 3: about you, what are your thoughts on how you balance
20:09
Speaker 3: the needs of the many, the needs of society and
20:12
Speaker 3: the grid, with the needs to ask people to behave differently.
20:17
Speaker 4: So I'll look at it from a business point of view,
20:20
Speaker 4: tim to give it a slightly different angle. If you'd
20:24
Speaker 4: ask me a year ago, i'd have said that greenops
20:28
Speaker 4: are arduous and you need to make sacrifices. My changing Sorry,
20:34
Speaker 4: my thinking has changed significantly over the past twelve months.
20:38
Speaker 4: Greenops are just good ops. Right. If I buy a
20:43
Speaker 4: laptop and get rid of it after three years, I've
20:45
Speaker 4: wasted money, end of conversation. If I buy a laptop
20:50
Speaker 4: and the build is terrible and it's using twice as
20:53
Speaker 4: much energy, I'm wasting money. If I buy a data
20:58
Speaker 4: census storage space and eighty percent of it is filled
21:03
Speaker 4: with data I don't use and wasting money. So green
21:11
Speaker 4: ops are just good ops, like there is no hindrance
21:14
Speaker 4: or impact on the user. If you want to operate
21:17
Speaker 4: successfully as a business and you want to be technology
21:19
Speaker 4: technology enabled, stop wasting money, like have efficient devices, get
21:26
Speaker 4: rid of junk data that you don't need. Maximize the
21:30
Speaker 4: utility of a capital investment, because that's what laptop is.
21:33
Speaker 2: It's a capital.
21:34
Speaker 4: Investment for your business to get outcomes. It is not
21:37
Speaker 4: a shiny device that's a status symbol. It's purely objective
21:42
Speaker 4: for you to deliver your business. And when you work
21:45
Speaker 4: in the public sector like we do, delivering you know,
21:48
Speaker 4: literally keeping the lights on, we should do that as
21:51
Speaker 4: cost effectively as possible. Green ops are just good ops.
21:55
Speaker 4: There's education that needs to go on with the users
21:58
Speaker 4: because I think the biggest barrier that we have tim
22:00
Speaker 4: is the IT sector has buried the impact that it
22:05
Speaker 4: has environmentally and socially for decades. Absolutely, we need to
22:10
Speaker 4: lift up that rock, right, And it's not a criticism.
22:15
Speaker 4: We have been actively ignorant of the impacts that it
22:18
Speaker 4: has had for a really long time, and we just
22:22
Speaker 4: need to take it on the chin and go, yeah,
22:24
Speaker 4: we could do that a lot better, and then do
22:27
Speaker 4: it better. I used to aim for perfection. My baseline
22:32
Speaker 4: now as an IT sustainability lead is less terrible? Right?
22:38
Speaker 4: Is running a laptop for four years instead of three
22:41
Speaker 4: less terrible than what we used to do? Yes? Right?
22:43
Speaker 4: Do that?
22:44
Speaker 3: Do it?
22:45
Speaker 4: It's going to Windows eleven going to reduce energy usage
22:48
Speaker 4: by one two turns out it's ten percent. Is that
22:52
Speaker 4: less terrible? Yes?
22:53
Speaker 3: Right?
22:53
Speaker 4: Do it? Just increments of less terrible will get us
22:58
Speaker 4: to where we need to be. Yeah, sorry, to set
23:03
Speaker 4: the bar so low. But when it's as bad as
23:05
Speaker 4: it is, just less terrible every day.
23:09
Speaker 3: Well, that's the advice you get all over the place,
23:11
Speaker 3: right if something feels insurmountable, the end goal is just
23:14
Speaker 3: so huge to almost unfathomable about how we get there.
23:17
Speaker 3: Take the little bit, little steps at a time, even Tom,
23:22
Speaker 3: but go back to when we had Ariana Huffington on right. Sure,
23:24
Speaker 3: she was a big advocate of little baby steps to
23:27
Speaker 3: make big change in your life. I think that's a
23:30
Speaker 3: I think that's an awesome way to look at it.
23:32
Speaker 2: Less terrible every Day was actually my annual review.
23:39
Speaker 3: That was my anonymous feedback time. So said my last question,
23:46
Speaker 3: I've got to run to an airport today. I'll turn
23:48
Speaker 3: it over to Tom when we wrap up with this,
23:50
Speaker 3: But I'm curious about your thoughts as a leader at ATOS.
23:55
Speaker 3: What are your thoughts about the actual platform, the Digital
23:58
Speaker 3: Employee Experience platform in the context of sustainability. We next
24:03
Speaker 3: thing don't find a lot of potential customers buying it
24:07
Speaker 3: for sustainability. They buy it for proactive it and to
24:11
Speaker 3: design and deploy better environments. But I'm curious how you're
24:15
Speaker 3: looking at the platform itself. And how it contributes to
24:18
Speaker 3: achieving not just progress, but significant progress towards the goals.
24:23
Speaker 3: Was it an aspect that you saw something, What did
24:26
Speaker 3: you see in the research that kind of leads you
24:28
Speaker 3: down that path?
24:29
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think there are really two elements where
24:34
Speaker 5: this platform is so essential. Three elements I would say.
24:39
Speaker 5: I think the first one would be if I speak,
24:42
Speaker 5: so we went, we went across. Once we've did put
24:45
Speaker 5: together our paper, we spoke to all our clients pretty
24:48
Speaker 5: much with our clients and we we kind of have
24:52
Speaker 5: the We know that if a client doesn't have any
24:56
Speaker 5: employ experienced type solution, no ONPO experience platforms, it's going
25:00
Speaker 5: to be very difficult to talk to them about caring
25:03
Speaker 5: for the environments where they're not really focused on their
25:07
Speaker 5: employees to start with, they're not pretty to invest in that.
25:10
Speaker 6: So that that that was that's normally a big strong
25:15
Speaker 6: signal about their vision of where they're going and how
25:19
Speaker 6: they're managing their workplace.
25:23
Speaker 5: The second element is very much about the scope to emission.
25:30
Speaker 5: So at the moment, as you know, companies are obliged
25:35
Speaker 5: to report on their carbon emission and for them to
25:40
Speaker 5: report on their electricity usage. The organization we've spoken to
25:44
Speaker 5: with asked how do you do it? And they say, oh,
25:46
Speaker 5: it's very simple. We take our electricity bill from our
25:50
Speaker 5: offices and it tells us how much electricity we're using,
25:54
Speaker 5: whether it's the printer or the laptop, et cetera, et cetera,
25:57
Speaker 5: and that's our that's our scope too. I said, it's simple. Well,
26:02
Speaker 5: what happens if you don't work in an office and
26:05
Speaker 5: you're using your corporate it outside of the office, how
26:09
Speaker 5: is that being reported? Well, it's not. No, there's a
26:14
Speaker 5: huge gap. It's a it's a huge empty space there.
26:19
Speaker 5: And if you don't have a tool to analyze your
26:23
Speaker 5: devices wherever you are physically located, then how how how
26:27
Speaker 5: are you going to be reporting your scope too?
26:31
Speaker 4: So can I can I dive in there? Also, if
26:34
Speaker 4: you're selling targets around reducing your office energy usage and
26:38
Speaker 4: you don't know how much of it is driven by
26:40
Speaker 4: laptops and monitors and other IT equipment, how on earth
26:44
Speaker 4: are you ever going to hit that energy reduction target?
26:48
Speaker 3: Right, David, you can't measure it when they're at home,
26:49
Speaker 3: So I'm going to hit my targets. But saying everybody
26:51
Speaker 3: out of the office.
26:52
Speaker 4: I was going to say it can drive. It can
26:54
Speaker 4: drive some incredibly negative behaviors, like, oh, we're going to
26:58
Speaker 4: reduce energy usage in our office by sending everyone home.
27:01
Speaker 4: Scope and emissions are exactly the same. In fact, they're
27:04
Speaker 4: probably worse because you don't have energy purchasing agreements at home,
27:07
Speaker 4: but you do for your offices. Yeah. Yeah, it's missing out.
27:12
Speaker 4: I see is a huge gap in your ability to
27:15
Speaker 4: be able to deliver on any of your objectives.
27:18
Speaker 3: It was the same argument when we were told we
27:21
Speaker 3: have to reduce Interinet tickets. Well great, I'm just going
27:23
Speaker 3: to walk around the floor and tell everyone to stop
27:24
Speaker 3: calling the hoop desk solve the problem. Yeah.
27:31
Speaker 5: The other aspect where we need a data platform is
27:36
Speaker 5: on the refresh decision.
27:38
Speaker 3: Right.
27:38
Speaker 5: We've spoken about here the four year you know, how
27:42
Speaker 5: do you apart from a time stamp, this device is
27:47
Speaker 5: three years or four years or five years old, how
27:49
Speaker 5: else do you decide when to replace and when you
27:52
Speaker 5: replace laptop? We're talking about three hundred kilos of you
27:56
Speaker 5: two huge investment. There's a huge impact. We're talking about
28:00
Speaker 5: one hundred and ninety thousand liters of water, which is
28:04
Speaker 5: such a precious asset at the moment we're talking about eWays,
28:08
Speaker 5: We're talking about all these different things, and at the moment,
28:11
Speaker 5: without a digital experience platform, you're just guessing. So pretty
28:19
Speaker 5: pretty fundamental.
28:19
Speaker 3: I would say, yeah, yeah, it's all all we've been
28:23
Speaker 3: living for decades, just in the arena of trial and
28:26
Speaker 3: error and guesswork and in action because we can claim
28:30
Speaker 3: that we don't have the data and that's all changed. Gentlemen,
28:34
Speaker 3: I'm gonna drop now, but I want to take the
28:36
Speaker 3: opportunity to thank you both for joining. I think there's
28:38
Speaker 3: a long neglected topic Tom and I need to make
28:40
Speaker 3: sure we keep it on our radar. Love the conversation
28:44
Speaker 3: and appreciate you both joining, and I'll catch you next time.
28:46
Speaker 2: Tom, Tim, And before I let you both go, one
28:51
Speaker 2: last question for you. Since the beginning of the new year,
28:55
Speaker 2: looking ahead to the end of rectife, I should say,
28:59
Speaker 2: what if this is the ability targets at your respective organizations,
29:03
Speaker 2: and what most excites you about the opportunities around this
29:07
Speaker 2: area in the coming year. Let's start with you, David.
29:12
Speaker 4: Thanks to us, I mean, so sustainability targets. We're really
29:18
Speaker 4: looking at each of our delivery towers and working with
29:22
Speaker 4: them on measuring some of the basic fundamentals and setting
29:26
Speaker 4: some targets around the basic fundamentals. I think a key
29:29
Speaker 4: area of focus for everyone, especially in the laptop space,
29:33
Speaker 4: should be Scope three emissions. So the impact of manufacturing
29:38
Speaker 4: the devices that you purchase. Choosing a device can make
29:43
Speaker 4: a difference, so depending on where it's made, depending on
29:47
Speaker 4: the energy mix where it's made, depending on working conditions,
29:50
Speaker 4: depending on all of those things have such an impact
29:54
Speaker 4: on environmental and social areas. Looking at the scope three
29:58
Speaker 4: emissions of individual device, looking at the life cycle assessments
30:01
Speaker 4: that are published by all manufacturers, and making good decisions
30:06
Speaker 4: based off the data that's in front of you, not
30:08
Speaker 4: just looking at the cost. It is probably an area
30:13
Speaker 4: where we're going to well, it's where we're going to
30:15
Speaker 4: be placing most of our focus this year is ensuring
30:18
Speaker 4: that we have embedded metrics and targets around our scope
30:21
Speaker 4: three emissions and that those are driving the right types
30:24
Speaker 4: of behavior within our procurement team and within our laptop
30:27
Speaker 4: provisioning team.
30:29
Speaker 2: Very cool, What about you, sep Oh.
30:32
Speaker 5: We have a super exciting set of roadmap for twenty
30:36
Speaker 5: twenty five. I think some of the stuff that stand
30:39
Speaker 5: out for me twenty twenty four was kind of the
30:43
Speaker 5: year of the laptop, and we wanted to find a
30:46
Speaker 5: very strong solution for laptop, which we've done. Now twenty
30:52
Speaker 5: five we're looking at mobile phones. They're also big, big
30:56
Speaker 5: carbon emission footprints, so we are talking to nancial partners
31:00
Speaker 5: in that space. I also have to mention AI, I
31:04
Speaker 5: think I can't. We can't we have a podcast without
31:07
Speaker 5: We almost.
31:08
Speaker 6: Made it.
31:12
Speaker 2: Resolution we do one episode, but.
31:17
Speaker 5: The the way next thing provides the condition of the
31:22
Speaker 5: inside of the device is very exciting and if you
31:25
Speaker 5: combine with some vision AI technology that can tell you
31:28
Speaker 5: the condition of the outside of the device. Using using
31:32
Speaker 5: a technology to determine whether the device should be replaced
31:35
Speaker 5: if it's in the good or bad condition, is a
31:38
Speaker 5: really cool feature that our R and D team are
31:41
Speaker 5: working on at the moment and are they are more.
31:44
Speaker 5: But yeah, the the future is bright. There's lots of
31:48
Speaker 5: really exciting stuff coming up in sustainability.
31:52
Speaker 4: The new year. Guys.
31:53
Speaker 2: Thanks for coming on, Thanks for thanks for sharing this
31:56
Speaker 2: data and don't think I'd have come across it hand
32:00
Speaker 2: for this opportunity to talk to you both.
32:01
Speaker 3: It's a really cool report.
32:03
Speaker 2: Well, thanks so much, guys. It's been great fun.
32:05
Speaker 4: Thanks to much, it's been great.
32:06
Speaker 6: Thank you very much.
32:09
Speaker 7: To make sure that you never miss an episode, subscribe
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32:19
Speaker 1: Of the show. Just tap the number of stars you
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Speaker 1: think the podcast deserves. If you'd like to learn more
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Speaker 1: about how next Thing can help me improve your digital
32:26
Speaker 1: employee experience, head over to nextthink dot com. Thank you
32:30
Speaker 1: so much for listening. Until next time,