The day was organised by waste management firm Helistrat. There were stalls to learn about plastic waste, a plastic bottle sculpture and the chance to add your pledge to a wall mural by artist Emma Paxton. 

 

Allison Jenkins from Helistrat says: ‘People on their own are doing some great things to tackle plastic waste, but businesses can do more to make their offices a greener place to be. ‘That’s what we are trying to get across today – it’s little changes like getting rid of plastic bottles or asking their suppliers to get rid of unnecessary plastic packaging. 

 

‘If every business did even a little bit then it would make a tremendous difference.’ 

 

Clare Seek from Portsmouth Repair Café said: ‘Far too often, businesses come across a problem like a broken paper shredder, and for convenience they throw it away and get a new one. 

 

‘At the Repair Cafe we’re big advocates of the fact that this shouldn’t be the case. ‘You think of all that plastic that is needlessly being thrown away for the sake of convenience, when it could just be fixed in an afternoon. 

 

‘It shouldn’t have to be this way, but by being able to talk to businesses they learn more about what damage that is doing.’ 

 

Bianca Carr from The Final Straw Solent, an anti-plastic community, says: ‘It’s really important that we reach out to businesses and encourage them to make the changes that can make a difference. 

 

‘For example, if an office was to give up plastic bottles and make everyone use refillable ones, that would stop literally hundreds of bottles going to landfill every year.’ 

 

Source: Portsmouth.co.uk

 

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Another area where businesses can improve their environmental friendliness is in their use of paper. Although we are well into the 21st century, many businesses still haven’t embraced the digital age and let go of the pulped trees. There are several common culprits:

 

 

Surely the bane of any hourly worker’s life; these pointless papers need to be printed out, filled in by hand and then submitted to the employer or agency so that they can be processed into actual data for the payroll system. There are so many points in the process which can go wrong. Staff forget to hand them in on time. Managers don’t have time to carefully check every single sheet and start rushing. Payroll staff misread a scribbled number and enter an incorrect time into Sagepay. 

 

Not only is this ineffective, it is completely unnecessary. There are plenty of digital solutions: everything from emailing electronically filled-in timesheets rather than wasting paper to going for a full-blown automated time management system. Our clocking terminals register users in less than a second using their smart-card or biometric fingerprint, and send the timings to the central system where they can be exported straight to all leading payroll systems. 

 

Another example of unnecessary paper usage is in holiday forms. A previous workplace of mine still used this archaic method: booking a holiday involved filling out a complex form with your name, department, manager’s name, holiday entitlement, current holidays booked, remaining holidays, and reason for holiday. This scrap of paper then had to travel through three different departments (manager, HR and Accounts) and the holiday date wasn’t considered approved until you received the tear-off slip in your in-tray, up to two weeks later. 

 

Again, this is a complete waste of time. Here at Time and Attendance Southern, we offer a Self Service Module, which allows employees to request absences with the click of a button. Their registered manager receives the request via an email alert, and can either approve or deny it just as quickly. Once approved, it is automatically added to that employee’s calendar. 

 

Hopefully it is now clear to you that switching to an automated system will not only help to save trees, but will make you a more modern and effective, quickly-moving workplace.