Away from the buzz over John Keells and its unbelievable ‘silence’ about the scathing judgement by the Supreme Court in the privatisation of Lanka Marine Services, we thought of digressing a bit and discussing a serious issue that confronts the corporate sector today – costs.

Across the board in companies, there is a conscious effort to cut costs which is virtually killing companies particularly given the sharp increase in fuel and energy. Many small and middle-level companies are struggling with rising production costs while others are able to effectively reduce costs essentially through energy saving and less waste.

Some weeks back, an interesting interaction at a meeting of The Sunday Times Business Club over cost-cutting measures at home and in the workplace came up with some novel ideas on the way forward.
A novel method, already in place, is the ‘daily T-shirt to work’ approach by global transporter Fedex. One of the members, who works at Fedex, cited this case as a way of reducing energy consumption across the home-to-office chain. The company encouraged formal attire only for occasions, he said. In many Colombo companies, there is a T-shirt-wearing culture mostly on Friday which is an international “Thank God it’s Friday” phenomenon. It began in one country where stress levels were high and the T-shirt was meant to prepare the worker to be casual and ease the ‘tensions within’ by the end of Friday, relax during the weekend, and be fresh for a new week on Monday.

Fedex appears to have taken that concept further and add to the many innovative measures taken by people and organisations to save energy consumption as energy costs keep rising sharply across the world. In the short-term however there could be some relief with global crude prices coming down to $117 per barrel last week from around $150 some months back though the two main retailers in Sri Lanka – CPC and LIOC – say there is no immediate price revision on the cards.

So how can you save energy from wearing a T-shirt? Many ways – less water used in washing T-shirts; no ironing needed if properly hung to dry; eliminates the need to wear three items per day – shirt/banian/tie; cooler particularly in the tropics, reduces sweat and the need for a fan or aircon.
Another novel energy saving idea was segregating a portion of the toilet cistern, say one litre, which will also be retained when flushing since there is a lot of excess water use.

Most of the club members went for the common ways of energy savings and minimising waster – reducing fuel and electricity costs. There were points made about ‘time-wasting’ in mainly government offices and reducing overtime.

Another novel idea is being practiced by Unilever where there is a mechanism to reduce waste in the canteen. Every day, company officials and the canteen keeper weigh the amount of food thrown into the bin and lists out the amount on a board urging employees to reduce this amount by either eating everything on the plate or dishing out only the amount that is required. After a year in practice, thrown-food was cut down by 70 percent, a Unilever staffer told the discussion.

Proper insulation is another method that was discussed citing examples of how buildings maximise the use of sunlight during the day and with the use of solar panels, at night too. Remember seeing the line “Please consider the Environment and DONT PRINT this email unless you really need to?” This is another successful method in cutting waste and is seen, ever though a marginal part of costs, as key a company’s bottomline.

Incentivising or making ‘businessmen out of workers, as one director of a company put it, is another avenue currently used. At one company, a general request to cut down on excess paper use for printing purpose fell on deaf ears. An incentive scheme was then introduced and lo and behold, there was a sharp percentage drop. Both the company and the employees benefited – win-win for all..
Reducing telephone usage with the adoption of technology such as video conferencing, email, Internet chat, etc was also proposed in addition to another novel approach -- thinking “out of the box” to develop strategies to cut costs.

Energy is our biggest cost at home and in the workplace with bills piling up. Sri Lanka, unlike many countries, is blessed with the sun right through the year but we still can’t come up with the right model in the wider use of solar power at home and in the workplace. It’s time the government and the private sector invest collectively in a research study that will come up with some practical and workable solutions. Any thoughts from our readers?

In the meantime the saga of the LMSL privatisation scandal continues. This week two key people who helped to fight it out in court – Vasudeva Nanayakkara and accountant Nihal Sri Ameresekere were publicly felicitated at a ceremony organised in Colombo for their role in exposing this corrupt deal. Nanayakkara, a veteran politician who hasn’t lost his fiery tone and aggression, called for the setting of a people’s movement to fight corruption and prevent misuse of public property. In the same breath we ask will the chambers of commerce and ‘do-good’ corporate leaders with CSR projects under their belt … ‘bell the cat’ and create a good governance movement for the corporate sector that will deal severely with the violators who preach but don’t practise accountability and good business practices?