“Eco Office Consultant” is an international initiative proposed by partner organizations from 6 EU countries – Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Norway, Germany and France. This project transpire from the philosophy over which all partners detected the need for the new job of “Eco Office Consultant” which is based upon the inadequacy of existing training systems and the necessity to promote new line of work in the labour market. One of the fundamental concepts of this project is that businesses as well as public enterprises must take a leading role in the transition towards a more sustainable society and that they should dare to transform their offices from within. 

It is estimated, that cost of wasted resources by typical office can be as high as 4%of turnover. This number could be reduced a great deal if office workers would start to tackle the Sustainable Development Goals and took responsibility for their actions – for instance, 50% of the waste of businesses is composed of paper, however behavioural changes, such as double-sided copying, could reduce the consumption by at least 20%.

Therefore, educational methods and efficient techniques for business, educators, learners at all levels for fighting excess consumption in everyday business life is in coherence with EU2020 strategy priorities to move towards a low-carbon economy. Moreover, job profile of Office Eco Consultant is showing great potential as it is naturally evolving from the current social, environmental and economic needs of modern workplace. 

The project aims, by exchanging ideas, know-how, experience and good practices, to develop and to pilot internationally innovative training practices, methodical tools and a certification system, designed for adult education sector stakeholders that seek to enhance their job market opportunities by pursuing career in promotion of resource and energy saving behaviouralong with the Green Growth concepts in office environment. This new non-formal educational program is set for improvement and extending the offer of high quality learning opportunities for adults, who do not have enough skillsto establish in the labour market, are unemployedor need to elevate their competences. The innovative aspect in this project rests with the new office vision, which is eco-friendly, safe and attractivefor office workers.

In October of 2018, the first transnational meetingof partners was held in Vilnius, Lithuania, where partner organizations from Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, France, Germany and Norway were introduced and project goals, target groups, work programme, project outputs, implementation timetable were reviewed.

Later on, during the 2nd transnational meeting of partners held in Pécs, Hungary, representatives of partner organizations decided upon specific topics that must be covered in order to properly contribute to promotion of resource and energy saving behaviour. It is foreseen that the training course will consist of 5 main modules. To make the development of the training program more efficient, it was agreed that each partner would focus on one of the identified areas of work – the allocation of topics for partners according to their experience and their area of work is as follows: Energy – Hungarian partner; Procurement – French partner; Transport – German partner; Resources – Polish partner; Involvement – Norwegian partner. Lithuanian partner will be responsible for the introduction, description of the Office Eco Consultant occupational profile, glossary of key terms and brief description of European legal regulations as well as country specific legal regulations. This allocation of topics was definitively confirmed during the recent transnational partners meeting that took place in Septeptember of 2019 in Royan, France.

Therefore,the training course will describe ways of paper usage reduction; efficient lighting and heating; cooling/ energy policies; recycling/reuse; green procurement; storage & disposal; transportation; meetings; education, policy advocacy, networking, experience and innovation. It is clear that all those areas of expertise are crucial, however according to the data analysis, conducted by all project partners, the current availability of tools and learning programs aimed to provide or strengthen the knowledge, skills and competences in this field is rather limited. Despite the fact that there are many training programs in this field, ranging from short 3-day long courses to bachelor study programs in higher education institutions and although they do cover a wide variety of topics, the majority of them do not provide a sufficient skills-set needed to implement the green business concept in the everyday life in the office.

The project aims to enhance transnational cooperation between potential stakeholders: project partners, public and private adult education and training providers, public employment services, NGOs, VET centres and multi-member associations. Besides organisations, target group includes educators, trainers and coaches active in the adult education as well as task coordinators, project managers, field practitioners, advisors, decision-makers and private learners - adults having at least secondary education who do not have enough skills to establish in the labour market, people working in declining sectors, maintenance and administrative workers that are unemployed, under-employed or in need to elevate their competences.

Overall, the results of the analysis prove that the proposed concept for introduction of a new occupational profile of “Office ECO Consultant” is reasonable, perspective and well needed. During the further project implementation stages, the consortium will provide unified training system „Office ECO Consultant“, which will not only be freely available, but also will be accessible online through an Interactive E-learning Portal. The training material will be available in national languages of all project partner organization countries as well as English language. 

„Office Eco Consultant“(2018-1-LT01-KA204-047022) – a Strategic Partnership, financed by the European Commission in the framework of the ERASMUS+, KA2 Programme.

For more information please visit the website of our project: https://eccooffice.eu/, where you can find all relevant information and news regarding the implementation of the project as well as subscribe to our newsletter.