April 2011 Archives

As you may have heard, we here at Wells Fargo are doing our best to encourage our customers to switch to paper-free products, like our Envelope-Free^SM ATMs and online banking options. What you might not have heard is that we're also focusing on reducing our own paper behind the scenes as well.

Being a financial services company, we use more paper per day than the average office worker. In fact, the Michigan Department of the Environment estimates that a bank like Wells Fargo can generate up to 2 pounds of paper waste per team member per day, compared to an average of 1.5 pounds per employees in other industries. The Environmental Paper Network estimates that if the average U.S.-based office cut paper use by just 10%, it would help prevent the emission of 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases or the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road for a full year.

So as part of our commitment to "green up" our own operations while also building a culture of sustainability with our team members, we're focusing on ways to reduce paper in our store operations. Our Sustainability Agent program has helped us to find some innovative ways to manage paper waste. For example:

• Jennifer Bocchino, one of our agents in Arizona, took a small step that created a huge impact. Her store uses a sign-in sheet to help organize customer visits. Now, instead of throwing the sheet away each day, her store uses one sheet that is laminated for reuse. That may seem like a small step, but think about her paper savings over a year. If just one-half of our 5,000+ store network took this step for a year, we’d save over 750,000 sheets of paper. (Note: We calculated this savings assuming that each of the 2,500 stores would use about 300 sheets of paper a year if they were using a daily sign-in sheet.)
• Our Sustainability Agent team in Colorado introduced a new way to process daily teller receipts. Rather than putting the receipts into envelopes that needed to be opened (and hopefully recycled) at the end of the day, our agents suggested eliminating the envelope and just sorting directly from the drawer. This process not only saves resources, but also time, as it makes it quicker to account for receipts and cash at the end of the day.
• Conor McDonald, one of our Sustainability Agents in Washington State, is always on the look-out for ways to reduce paper and print responsibly at work. From using biodegradable cups in the break room to printing (only when necessary) double-sided on 100% recycled content paper to encouraging customers who visit his store to use online banking options, Conor is helping to make his banking store a good ecological steward in an area that cares deeply about the environment.
• Tami Rearwin, a Service Manager and Sustainability Agent in Washington State, is helping the store IT team design a fully automated process for teller line referrals, streamlining the process of recording customer visits from using a paper journal and up to three online tools into just one online tool. The solution may take some time to fully develop, but we're all excited about the environmental (paper) and economic (improved customer service and increased teller efficiency) impact that will likely come about when this change is fully implemented.

So those are a few behind the scenes solutions that we're working on, but we'd love to hear feedback and more ideas from you! Please let us know how you think we can reduce paper waste and improve your Wells Fargo in-store banking experience. We're listening!

I was just chatting with one of my colleagues, Brian McNutt (Wells Fargo Construction Manager Extraordinaire), about our retail banking stores and the differences between stores built to conventional standards and those built to LEED® standards. He finally summed it up like this: LEED® buildings just feel good.

Systematically, a lot goes into the design, construction and operation of a LEED® building. Much of the popular focus is on the equipment and materials that go into those buildings. Looking at each part and piece, the differences between the conventional and the sustainably-driven generally go like this:

• Reduced environmental impact
• Reduced dependence on natural resources
• Higher efficiency

However, there is an intangible difference to the overall system that is very important—I touched on this in my previous post about Indoor Air Quality. It's how we feel when we're inside those buildings. I am so pleased that this component is captured in LEED®'s Indoor Environmental Quality category.

As someone who spends her working days striving for increased occupant comfort, I've become quite sensitive to things like temperature and air quality. In terms of the bottom line, when occupants experience discomfort, productivity decreases and costs increase. And I have no doubt that sales are negatively impacted, as well. In terms of my own objectives, the thought that any occupant experiences discomfort bugs the heck out of me.

My earlier post also detailed a lot of what we're doing to ensure occupant comfort. We dedicate significant resources to ensure our team members and customers are safe and comfortable, and we continue to make improvements in how we do this.

However, sometimes things go awry—whether in the design, construction or operation of our buildings. And sometimes a building looks perfect on paper, but in 3D it's a different story. And the last thing we want is for any of our LEED® stores to under perform.

For this reason, I take it upon myself to visit our stores and kick the tires, so to speak. I walk in like I'm a team member or customer and experience the environment from their perspectives. Is the air stuffy? Is it too hot in the lobby? Is it too cold in the conference room? Is there glare? I ask team members for their feedback. I don't have a standard checklist. I just let my senses and the occupants do the talking.

Yes, we do an occupant survey 10-months after store opening and this is quite helpful and efficient. However, I feel the need to be a little inefficient every now and again and it's in those inefficient moments that I gather a lot of important information—information I take back to my colleagues to ensure that issues are resolved and procedures are improved.

So if you're ever in a Wells Fargo store and see a brunette nosing around and jotting notes in a Moleskine journalist notepad, that's me. I think every building and home owner should do this from time to time.

Back to Brian's summation that LEED® buildings just feel good. I have to agree with him—a properly performing LEED® building does, indeed, feel good. The air is fresh, the temperature and lighting are comfortable, and the occupants are content.

I am making it a point to increase awareness of this intangible and building providers need to be more conscious of it. How do your occupants feel when they're inside your building? How are you impacting their lives once they enter your four walls? If we were chefs we would want our food to taste good. So as builders, we should ensure our buildings feel good.

Have you ever experienced a particularly good indoor environment? What was it like? Let us know!

Businesses do not become environmentally friendly overnight. Incremental changes and positive results add momentum that can lead to bigger—and greener—changes overtime. About a year ago, Michele introduced you to guest blogger Richard Weeks, Senior Vice President for Wells Fargo's Internet Services Group, who shared with you why it makes sense for businesses to be greener.

Well, we're thrilled to have him back to encourage our business customers to consider the benefits of making pro-environmental changes! This time, Richard has four reasons how "going green" can help your small business.

If you're a customer who's already made some of these changes, we're interested in hearing from you. How has "going green" benefited your business? What advice or experience can you share with us that will help other businesses prosper or avoid some of the pitfalls you may have encountered? Please let us know! (—Stephanie)

It may be a coincidence that Earth Day follows closely on the heels of Tax Day each year. However, the timing does give you an opportunity to assess how "going green" might have real benefits for your business' bottom line.

There are a number of resources here at Wells Fargo, such as the Business Insights Resource Center*, that can provide information about those benefits. Reviewing the Wells Fargo Environmental Forum is educational for me, and is an easy way to stay informed about new opportunities to maintain your commitment to the environment.

And with a little time, effort, creativity, and commitment, doing so may help:

• Protect your business
• Improve your cash flow
• Save you money
• Attract new customers into your place of business

Let's take a closer look at each one of these potential benefits...

April is a busy month at Wells Fargo. From financial (Teach your Child to Save Day on April 12) and career education (Take your Child to Work Day on April 28) to community involvement (National Volunteer Week from April 10-16) to environmental celebrations for Earth Day (April 22, of course), we cover it all in April.

This year, we are adding a new day to our list of April celebrations: Rebuilding Together Day on April 30, a national day of service dedicated to helping revitalize local neighborhoods through home and community projects.

Rebuilding Together is a national nonprofit that helps preserve affordable home ownership and revitalize communities. Their network of more than 200 affiliates provides free rehabilitation and critical repairs to the homes of low-income Americans. They assist a variety of people in need, including disabled and aging homeowners, homeowners displaced by natural disasters, and veterans with disabilities.

Rebuilding Together also utilizes a variety of green building practices in every rehabilitation project they complete. Their work includes energy efficiency, water conservation, recycling construction waste and using recycled materials wherever possible, indoor environmental health, smart land use and homeowner education.

If you'd like to learn more about the work that Rebuilding Together does, please watch our YouTube video that features Wells Fargo Volunteers in action in Des Moines, Iowa (Rebuilding Together and Wells Fargo Rock the Block!).

This year, Wells Fargo's network of over 50 Green Teams are working with local Rebuilding Together affiliates to help with energy efficiency and gardening projects in their communities. Projects are taking place all over the country: in Florida, Wells Fargo Green Teams in Jacksonville and Orlando will be rehabbing homes in their local neighborhood; in Charlotte, the Green Team will focus on a neighborhood revitalization project; and right here in my hometown of San Francisco, Wells Fargo Green Team SF will be providing much needed energy efficiency repairs for seven home owners in the Ocean-Merced-Ingleside (OMI) neighborhood.

Wells Fargo is thrilled to help this important community group. And we hope you'll help us in our efforts to support Rebuilding Together. Here are a few ways that you can get involved:

• Consider volunteering for Rebuilding Together Day and find a local project.
• If you can't volunteer just yet, you can still help spread the word. Consider posting information on Rebuilding Together to one of your favorite social media sites, like Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.
• Let us know what you think about this effort by adding your voice to the conversation! Leave us a comment with your thoughts and feedback.

And please be sure to check back in May—we'll be sharing lots of photos from some of our Rebuilding Together events!

Please let me introduce Rex Northen, the Executive Director for the Cleantech Open—the largest business competition in the world that is sweeping our country. I have gotten to know Rex over the last few years, and his passion for innovation and supporting entrepreneurs in clean technology has truly been captivating and contagious. A true entrepreneur at heart, he has had a long history of building and managing startup companies in both Europe and the U.S.

For the second year, Wells Fargo is a proud national supporter of the Cleantech Open. It's an initiative very much in line with our own goals to support environmental initiatives that create jobs, support small business and entrepreneurs, encourage innovation and bring solutions to communities across the country and even around the world. I encourage everyone to learn more about Cleantech Open and get involved. Rex, take it away! (—Ashley)

Thank you, Ashley! I begin with a statistic: The United States sends over $1 billion dollars (PDF) overseas every day of every week to pay for oil imports.

Now there are plenty of ideas about how we can cut that cost to our economy. Consider just one: electric vehicles, a quieter, cleaner way of getting from A to B. Because electric motors run at an equivalent of 100 mpg or better, the cost of electricity needed to get you to work each day in tomorrow's electric car will be a fraction of what it costs you now in gasoline.

But there's a problem. Today's batteries are too heavy and too expensive. Electric cars costing under $30,000 typically have a range of 100 miles or less. And of course, if we manage to solve that problem, there's another one right on its heels: In order to charge the batteries of millions of shiny new electric cars each night using clean energy sources like solar or wind, we'll need to upgrade our aging electricity grid.

There are plenty of similar challenges, and they are all big. But with the right brains on the case, we can solve them all, and the dividends for solving them are enormous.

There have been calls from Bill Gates, former Microsoft CEO, Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE, and others, to triple the federal government's investment in energy R&D. Depending on how you count it, your taxpayer dollars help fund about $5 billion every year in basic energy research—a trifling sum in comparison to the nearly $400 billion we spend on annual oil imports, or, for that matter, the $30 billion we spend each year on healthcare research, or the $80 billion dished out each year on military research.

But basic research is, literally, just the first step. What's comes next? What happens to the promising progeny of our most brilliant researchers?

In my last post I talked about home air quality and made a promise to you that I would be back to talk about how Wells Fargo is addressing air quality in our stores. Well, here I am! I hope this post shows just how much importance Wells Fargo places on both the well-being of our team members and our customers' experience when they enter our four walls.

Have you ever worked in a building with bad air quality? Gross, right? And I am sure it had some negative effect on your health and productivity. In fact, studies show there is a relationship between those things. Poor indoor air quality (IAQ) has a negative impact on occupant health and productivity. Optimal IAQ, on the other hand, not only mitigates some of the negatives, but can even show positive impact. In short, optimal IAQ can actually increase productivity.

As you already know, we are building our new stores to achieve LEED® certification and are currently developing a LEED certification program that encompasses about 2500 of our existing stores. One of the great things about LEED is that it pays serious attention to IAQ and lays out a framework through which we can meet LEED's rigorous standards. In fact, an entire credit category called Indoor Environmental Quality is dedicated to occupant comfort with focus on IAQ.

For instance, in our new stores and in addition to meeting LEED's requirements for IAQ performance, we are seeking to achieve several credits that address IAQ. These include the following:

• Construction IAQ Management Plan: During Construction
• Construction IAQ Management Plan: Before Occupancy
• Low Emitting Materials

Fear not! I will explain what each of these mean so please keep reading....

Consumers have adopted so many electronic things—such as books, maps, greeting cards, and invitations—it is just a matter of time before electronic banking becomes the norm. In fact, I'm surprised it is not already the norm!

Why is it taking so long to shift to paperless, electronic banking? Why would you want to wait until you are at home, or in the office or your local bank to view your financial transactions when it is so convenient to view and make transactions from your computer or mobile device? And why would you want to store a whole bunch of paper, when you can keep financial statements neatly organized online?

We're working hard to use technology to help customers like you access information when and where you want it, so you can run your business—and life—more efficiently.

Today's announcement about our latest mobile innovation is just one example: Our WellsOne® Commercial Card customers can now manage their accounts and capture expenses on their smartphones. While this service is limited to commercial and business banking customers, we have lots of online options for our retail banking and small business customers, too.

Please join us in supporting the shift from resource intensive, paper-based banking to online and mobile banking by choosing to bank online, receive online only statements, and exploring mobile banking options for small business and retail banking! It's a shift towards a greener and more convenient future.

Thanks everyone, for participating in our March Poll of the Month about participating in Earth Hour 2011! As you can see, 82% of you who responded said that yes, you were going to show support for global action on climate change by turning off your non-essential lights for one hour.

The topic of Earth Hour also led some of our readers to have a conversation in the comments section of one of our posts—we love it when you share your thoughts!

Additionally, here are some nice Earth Hour photos that people like you took from around the world. If you'd like, you can go Beyond the Hour to take action to make our world a better place and share your act with the world.

Now we'd like to ask you to vote in our newest Poll of the Month. With an eye towards Earth Day 2011 on April 22, we're wondering: What would compel you to switch to paperless banking?

Please take a moment and let us know!