Building Energy Resilience

Ideas to fuel a sustainable built environment

Eric Hauser

Eric Hauser

As Cx Associates' Director of Finance and Operations, Eric wears many hats - he creates and tracks budgets and projections, handles all receivables and payables, manages CxA's PM and bookkeeping platform, administers payroll and employee benefit programs, manages recruitment, and drafts cost estimates and proposals. Eric joined Cx Associates in 2009 as the Operations Manager, and in July 2020 was promoted to his current position. Prior to joining Cx Associates, Eric served for nearly a decade in the non-profit sector at several organizations in the DC and NYC areas. In 2014, Eric and his wife relocated to Chicago from Vermont. Eric continues to work remotely for Cx Associates.

Recent posts by Eric Hauser

5 min read

Onboarding with Purpose

By Eric Hauser on Aug 2, 2023 10:00:00 AM

Have you ever started a new job and your first day goes something like this: You arrive, and no one was expecting you or realized you were starting that day; you didn’t have a workstation set up; no one knew how to get into your computer; there was no work for you to do; and no one knew which forms you needed to complete to get you enrolled in benefits, payroll, etc.?

5 min read

Green Incentives Reboot: Creating True Incentives to Reduce Carbon Emissions

By Eric Hauser on Mar 16, 2022 10:15:00 AM

Nearly ten years ago, in June of 2012, Cx Associates launched our Green Incentives program. Initially aimed at reducing the carbon footprint of employee commuting and work-related travel, the program provided free bus passes to any employee who wanted one, a free personal CarShare Vermont membership, and provided “incentives” (rewards? More on this in a bit) for employees who walked or cycled to work. At the same time, we stopped offering free parking to employees.

In 2014, Cx Associates was awarded the 2014 Governor’s Award for Environmental Excellence for our Green Incentives program. By most measures, the program was a success! We had achieved nearly 100% employee participation year over year, had reduced miles driven, and caused employees to walk and bike to work more frequently.

Or so we thought.

As we sat on our laurels for the next few (ahem, 7?) years, it began to become clear that we could do more. And in fact, the more we considered the “incentives” we were offering, the less they seemed like actual incentives, and began to look more like rewards. They were not really changing behavior. Many of our employees live close enough to the office that they would happily walk or cycle to work even if we offered free valet parking. Others were already committed public transit users and wouldn’t drive to work if we wanted them to. Our “award-winning green incentives program” sure sounded nice on paper and in our marketing materials, but there were no teeth behind it. We had failed to walk our talk.

Topics: Sustainability Carbon Reduction Staff Incentive
6 min read

Creating a Positive Remote Work Culture

By Eric Hauser on May 19, 2021 10:00:00 AM

Cx Associates was obviously not alone in shutting down our main office in Burlington, Vermont in March 2020 as the coronavirus pandemic hit the United States. Employers across the country shut down their offices and told their employees to work from home for the foreseeable future. Last summer, Cx Associates took measures in our office to enable a slow (and optional) return to working in the office – we constructed plastic barriers between workstations, installed HEPA air filters at each desk, and mandated mask use when not at one’s desk. But one year later, we are still very much a distributed team; we have one employee who already worked remotely, and many others who either prefer to work from home when possible and/or are not yet comfortable going back to the office.

Topics: technology COVID-19 coronavirus remote
5 min read

Saving the Planet One Veggie Burger at a Time

By Eric Hauser on Dec 4, 2019 10:00:00 AM

Cx Associates’ work focuses on engineering services that save energy, and thus doing our part to save the planet. All of us also have a strong personal commitment to living as sustainably as we can, recognizing that no one is perfect, and that we all do the best we can. Our employees walk or bike to work, take public transportation, compost, live in walkable neighborhoods, drive efficient cars, and recycle.

Topics: Sustainability Climate Change
4 min read

Housing Density, Liberal Ideals, and Nimby-ism

By Eric Hauser on Jun 5, 2019 10:00:00 AM

Farhad Manjoo’s piece in the New York Times caught my eye recently and struck a chord. It describes the awful wealth gap that is increasing, seemingly by the day, with each newly minted tech billionaire in the San Francisco Bay Area. He reports that despite the fact that “the annual household income necessary to buy a median-priced home [in San Francisco] now tops $320,000,” California lawmakers recently killed Senate Bill 50, which would have undone zoning restrictions in the state. Changing these zoning restrictions would make it possible for more dense housing to be built, thereby increasing the supply and providing some relief to the non-billionaires in California.

Topics: Sustainability Energy Efficiency Housing-Density Affordable Housing
6 min read

My Life as a Remote Employee: Part II

By Eric Hauser on Nov 7, 2018 10:00:00 AM

Last week in part I of this post, I discussed the advantages of companies allowing some workers to work remotely, and what my transition to a remote worker was like. In this week’s follow up post, I’ll get a little more into the logistics of working remotely and flag some recommended practices and tools that have worked well for us.

Topics: Workplace & People
3 min read

My Life as a Remote Employee: Part I

By Eric Hauser on Oct 31, 2018 10:00:00 AM

In 2014, due to life and professional circumstances unrelated to my job as Operations Manager at Cx Associates, my wife and I relocated from Burlington, Vermont to Chicago, Illinois. Having worked for Cx Associates since 2009, I was reluctant to leave behind my job – I was happy there, the people I worked with were fantastic, and the work was meaningful and interesting. Luckily for me, when I approached the owners about the possibility of continuing to work remotely for CxA from Chicago, they agreed to let me stay on. I was ecstatic!

Topics: Workplace & People
4 min read

The Evolution of Cx Associates’ Award-Winning Green Incentives Program

By Eric Hauser on May 28, 2014 6:00:01 AM

An enthusiastic “champion,” and a collaborative, all-inclusive approach make for a winning program

Topics: Standards and Metrics
4 min read

Green Benefits: 6 Ways to Encourage Employees Who Commute

By Eric Hauser on Jun 6, 2012 7:00:00 AM

Saving energy and promoting sustainability are the core philosophies underlying all of our client project work at Cx Associates. This strong shared belief in sustainability is part of our company’s culture. So about 18 months ago, we began brainstorming about other areas where we could extend this philosophy in our company beyond actual project work. One of the first things that came to mind was commuting, and we began to consider how we could encourage our employees to use the most environmentally-friendly means available for their commute back and forth to our office in downtown Burlington, Vermont.

Topics: Sustainability Workplace & People

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