Workplace sustainability: Strategies for success in enterprise IT

Today, if you Google “laptop failure rate,” the most prominent search result you will find is a research paper conducted by SquareTrade, which states that a third of laptops fail within three years. Unfortunately, this research was conducted in 2009, more than 15 years ago. What’s worse is that it examined only 30,000 devices — a small sample size, indeed.

When Atos launched the first sustainable workplace offering on the market at COP28 in December 2023, we believed that we could not put together a credible solution without solid, trusted data about device longevity. 

As the largest provider of device analytics services, we are fortunate to have access to data for over one million devices. By adding contributions from our valued partners and clients, we were able to analyze this data and compile 25+ key takeaways about digital workplace sustainability.

The point of the study was to dive deep into how long devices last, how well they perform, and how that performance changes over time. We also examined important topics like what to do with aging assets and how to optimize energy consumption.

Some of the findings were really surprising, so in this article we will share a few key insights about digital workplace sustainability.

What we learned about workplace sustainability 

First off, it must be said bluntly: We are a wasteful industry. This is not meant as an accusation but as an observation — and a call to do a better job in the future. The fact of the matter is that we are highly dependent on devices in our personal and professional lives.

We believe it’s important to stop thinking of our devices as disposable and start valuing them the way a cabinetmaker would view a trusty old hand plane. Here are three of the most common problems we observed:

Problem #1: Devices are replaced irrespective of their condition

Since 79% of the carbon footprint of a laptop is generated during the manufacturing phase (its embedded carbon footprint), IT leaders must pay attention to exactly when the best time is to replace a device.

Based on our analysis, large organizations are beginning to move from a three-year refresh cycle to a four-year cycle. Yet, there is a lot more we can do. Despite this longer lifecycle, we found that only 12.3% of devices that go through the decommissioning process are actually faulty. Having a more accurate picture of the true laptop failure rate is important to reducing waste.

Problem #2: Device usage is not measured properly

The status of device electricity usage (the usage carbon footprint) is dire. Many product carbon footprint (PCF) calculations only look at the electricity usage of a device when it is idle. Based on real-world data, our tests showed that the PCF of devices in actual use may be as much as 2 to 3 times higher than calculated!

For Windows devices, the powercfg utility comes closest to accurately measuring electricity consumption in real time, but it only works at the OS level. As a consequence, it underestimates energy consumption by an order of magnitude. Unfortunately, OEM battery management tools are also unable to provide accurate electricity usage.

This issue has been neglected in the past, as ESG leaders use office building energy reporting to determine their Scope 2 carbon emissions. Unfortunately, it does not reflect the reality on the ground — which is that employees take their office with them when they work from home.

We need a solution to report on electricity usage for employees, irrespective of their location.

Problem #3: Employees are not taught how to use their devices effectively

As part of the study, we looked at the 50 settings that have the most impact on a device’s electricity usage. We found that only 40% of these settings can be dictated with automated policies. In other words, 60% of the settings with the ability to have a positive environmental impact cannot be enforced organization-wide. They require users to take action individually.

The broad implication is that creating a sustainable workplace requires employee education. Here, the news is not great either. Evidence shows that employees are not taught how to use their laptops sustainably. 16% of users don’t turn their devices off at the end of the day, and 9% of users are running more than one laptop during their workday.