By Business & Finance 
Pictured: John Keohane, CEO & CO-Founder of Enware
John Keohane is CEO and Co-Founder of Enware, the new online energy and environmental awareness employee platform, that enables organisations to commit to sustainability and harness the benefits of having a proven, reportable sustainability programme running across their organisation. The comprehensive new online platform assists and supports engagement with an organisation’s energy reduction and environmental schemes, and aims to inform and educate staff members on energy saving and better environmental practices. Enware also encourages staff involvement in an organisation’s energy and environmental policies through feedback opportunities.
What are your main priorities and goals in your role?
I try to ensure that we are helping organisations fast track their sustainability goals by engaging everyone across the full organisation. My main goal is to make Enware the number one software platform globally for organisations looking to reduce costs and build sustainability teams.
What are your biggest challenges as CEO?
Anticipating our clients’ needs in the current environment, where things are moving quickly and demand is growing rapidly due to the urgency of climate change.
How do you keep your team/ staff motivated?
It’s the why that gets us out of bed in the morning to do what we do
I believe it’s really important to have a shared common purpose with colleagues. It’s the why that gets us out of bed in the morning to do what we do. We are tackling climate change with a global solution to impact millions of individuals and their organisations. Everyone is passionate about making an impact on a global scale from our base in Cork, Ireland. The challenge of climate change is immense, but we believe Enware can play a big part to fast track actions in organisations across the globe.
What are the challenges facing the industry going forward?
Most countries across the world are still grappling with COVID, which has derailed climate change action plans to a degree. As a result, most governments and organisations will have to double down on their efforts to achieve carbon neutrality in order to meet near, medium and long term sustainability targets.
What new trends are emerging in your industry?
With the work from home culture over the last 18 months there has been a shift to providing energy consulting online instead of the traditional onsite method. We are also seeing clients’ needs change from ad hoc consultancy on energy and sustainability, to a more structured full time approach as companies embrace sustainability as a core value to help them reduce costs, increase profitability, and attract and retain quality staff.
Are there any major changes you would like to see in your sector?
It would be great to see the new wave of sustainability managers being given more freedom to shape the direction of the firms they work. Instead what we currently witness in some instances are sustainability roles being created to tick boxes at board level, and ultimately having little or no impact in reality.
As an employer are you finding any skill gaps in the market?
There is definitely a skills gap in the energy sector at the moment, but this should start to ease in the next decade as more and more graduates filter through from the various Energy Engineering and Sustainability courses across our third level institutes.
How has the COVID-19 crisis affected your business/sector?
This has been really positive for Enware as it accelerated the demand for our platform due to the requirement for firms to look for new online solutions to help them deliver energy savings and become carbon neutral
How do you define success and what drives you to succeed?
I’m driven to succeed out of fear of what will happen to our planet
Success to me is being healthy, happy and having the opportunity to make a positive impact on society through work. I’m driven to succeed out of fear of what will happen to our planet if we don’t heed the warnings and continue with business as usual.
What’s the best advice you’ve been given, or would give, in business?
Make sure to always take time to work on your business, as opposed to always working in it. This is very important to allow growth to happen as it can be tempting to get caught up in the day to day goings on and miss the bigger picture.
What have been your highlights in business over the past year?
Launching Enware after over a year of R&D and seeing the demand for the platform to date, which validated all the time and investment that went into getting it to market.
What’s next for your company?
As we continue to grow and hire talent, we are planning some new and really exciting features and benefits for Enware that we will be launching over the next 12 months as we continue to help organisations from 100 to 100,000 people build sustainability teams.
Where do you want your business/brand to be this time next year?
Our vision is for Enware to be the go to brand for Employee Sustainability Engagement.
