Sustainability is important for businesses of all shapes and sizes, so organizations are always looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint and environmental impact. This often requires finding new solutions and practices that can promote sustainability, especially with the increase in remote/hybrid work and Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies.
With that in mind, it’s time to look at how remote access and support can help IT teams and organizations reduce office carbon footprint and support sustainability. We’ll examine the factors that contribute to carbon emissions in the workplace, how to create remote work policies that support sustainability, and how solutions like Splashtop are helping companies go greener.
Why Remote Support is More Sustainable Than Traditional IT
Traditional on-site IT is not the most sustainable practice. Large IT infrastructures can lead to increased energy consumption, electronic waste, and carbon emissions, not to mention the emissions from daily commutes.
Remote support reduces many of these causes. The ability to access remote devices from anywhere empowers IT agents to provide support from the comfort of home or in the office, reducing the need to travel and manage end-user devices directly. This also leads to lower energy consumption, making remote support more environmentally friendly.
Of course, responsibility doesn’t lie solely on IT teams. Office buildings, transportation, and daily device usage all contribute in their own way, and organizations frequently seek ways to reduce emissions across their workforces. However, remote support’s benefits extend beyond the IT team and help lower the carbon footprint across a company.
Main Sources of Workplace Carbon Emissions
That being said, we need to examine the causes of office carbon emissions. From there, we can determine how to reduce the carbon footprint at work. The main emission drivers in the office include:
Office energy consumption: Think about how much energy a single office building uses. The entire building must be heated during cold days and kept cool when it's hot, while a plethora of devices consume energy each day. Computers, extra monitors, printers, servers, and so on use electricity, not to mention office amenities like coffee machines and refrigerators.
Waste: All this consumption also leads to waste. Offices tend to churn through disposable items, from printer paper to food packaging to single-use coffee pods. While these may be little things on their own, once they’re multiplied across multiple employees, offices, and buildings, the waste can add up quickly.
Commute/travel: Car travel and flying are the two forms of travel with the largest carbon footprint, and they’re also the most common ways of getting to work and business trips. Not only is rush hour traffic frustrating for employees, but all those cars traveling to and from their offices every day can significantly contribute to carbon emissions. Then, when employees need to travel long distances for business trips and conferences, air travel contributes to emissions further.
Dead devices: Electronic waste is another contributor to a company’s carbon footprint. When devices are left to die, that contributes to electronic waste, while replacing them has its own environmental cost.
How Remote Access Reduces IT’s Carbon Footprint
Given the multiple causes of office carbon emissions and waste, how does remote access help? Organizations that use remote access and remote support solutions can reduce their emissions in several ways, including:
1. Centralized IT Infrastructure
Centralizing IT infrastructure through cloud-based solutions also helps reduce energy consumption and the need for physical hardware. Not only does this make it easier for employees and IT agents to work from anywhere, but it also simplifies IT operations and generates less electronic waste.
2. Lowering Travel-Related Emissions
Whether IT agents commute to the office daily or travel to troubleshoot devices in person, travel and transportation are significant causes of emissions. With remote support, IT agents don’t need to travel to clients’ locations to provide assistance and resolve issues, or even commute to the office, as they can remotely access and troubleshoot devices from anywhere.
3. Extending Device Lifespan
Remote support can help sustainability by extending the lifespan of electronic devices. Timely, automated updates, troubleshooting on demand, and easy access to remote maintenance can help keep employees’ devices running smoothly, so they don’t need to be replaced nearly as often. This reduces electronic waste and helps conserve resources, providing another boost to sustainability.
4. Fostering a Culture of Sustainability
Sustainability is a shared responsibility, and when businesses start to embrace eco-friendly practices, it will spread across the company. Individual steps, like supporting remote work, using remote support software, and other energy-efficient IT solutions, can add up and help drive an overall change towards sustainability.
Aligning Remote Work Policies With Sustainability Objectives
So, how can businesses design remote work policies with sustainability in mind? As demonstrated, remote support is a great way to help IT agents lower their carbon footprint, but that’s just the start. Other ways to align secure remote work and sustainability include:
Reduce office space: Remote access and support make it easy for employees to work from anywhere, on any device, which means there’s less need for large offices (and the power consumption they require). Supporting a remote and hybrid work environment minimizes the need for large offices, which helps reduce an organization’s carbon footprint.
Lower energy consumption: Do you really need multiple TV monitors running your company logo across the office all day? Looking into ways to lower energy consumption, even by a little, can lead to lower carbon emissions and help companies reach their sustainability goals.
Support green commuting/telecommuting options: Supporting remote work and telecommuting is a great way to decrease carbon emissions from the daily commute. Beyond that, encouraging green options, such as biking and public transit, can also help lower travel-related emissions and help employees support sustainability.
Education and culture: As mentioned before, sustainability is a shared responsibility. Companies can support sustainable behavior by encouraging climate-friendly behaviors, educating employees on how they can help reduce emissions, rewarding sustainable behavior, and finding ways to support a more eco-friendly business environment.
Drive Performance & Sustainability Together with Splashtop's Remote Access Solutions
The environmental benefits of remote access software are clear: remote access and support can reduce an office’s carbon footprint by lowering power consumption, reducing electronic waste, and eliminating the need to travel to the office or visit end users. If you want a powerful and robust solution that helps IT teams and employees work from anywhere, on any device, Splashtop has what you need.
With Splashtop, you can easily connect to work devices (including desktop computers, laptops, and Internet of Things devices) from anywhere. This allows remote and hybrid employees to access their files, projects, and specialized tools across devices, no matter where they are. Splashtop’s remote support software lets IT agents access and manage remote devices for technical support and troubleshooting, so they can help end users anytime, anywhere.
When paired with Splashtop AEM (Autonomous Endpoint Management), organizations can further optimize energy efficiency through real-time patching, automation, and device visibility, reducing both security risk and carbon impact.
Splashtop’s solutions support robust, agile remote work environments, reducing the need for large, energy-intensive offices and travel while improving productivity, cybersecurity, and efficiency. With Splashtop, organizations can empower their employees to work anywhere while reducing carbon emissions, energy usage, and e-waste, creating a more efficient and sustainable work environment.
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