Archives for February 2023

We’ve been busy working towards our Net Zero goals, making positive impacts within our local communities, sourcing new innovations, and developing our colleagues. 2022 was a fantastic year for us, and below are just some of the amazing things we’ve achieved.

Launching our Better Places Strategy

In 2022, we launched our sustainable ‘Better Places’ strategy – from energy and carbon reduction to waste management and biodiversity, our strategy aims to create meaningful and impactful solutions. Better Places is built with four strategic pillars, each a focus area based on our material issues and associated long-term goals:

Better Places is embedded into every part of our business, helping us to take meaningful action and provide services that will support the sustainability commitments of you, our clients.

Partnering with Planet Mark & Becoming Net Zero

We’d love to collaborate with you and help you achieve your sustainability and net zero goals – please speak to your Contract Manager for more information.

In January 2023, we attended The Planet Mark Awards and were proud to be shortlisted in the ‘Best Company’ category. We were among national companies including Scottish Power and Road Chef, and to be seen alongside them is a fantastic achievement.

Our nomination is a representation of all the hard work we have put into reaching our sustainability goals, and working with Planet Mark over the past few years. Our journey has been rapid and rewarding so far, working with service partners and our clients alike to join and support us in our ambition to become Net Zero by 2030. 

Find out how we collaborated with our service partner, First Mile, to reduce our carbon emissions, avoiding the release of approximately 200kg of CO2 into the atmosphere here.  

We are one of the first cleaning companies to have a clear roadmap in place with milestones to ensure we can achieve our long-term goals. We have even completed the first measurement of our scope 3 emissions! Our achievements so far include:

• A sustainable Service Support Centre refurbishment – removal of gas supply, a heat recovery and natural airflow system and increased biophilia
• A growing electric and hybrid fleet
• Renewable energy sources
• Providing chemical free cleaning
• Tree planting schemes
• Delivering IOSH Environment for Business training to both our colleagues and service partners
• A sustainable procurement strategy to analyse products and services cradle to grave
• Removing plastic waste from our operations and partnering to improve waste education 

Increasing our social value performance year on year

With Planet Mark, we use their three-step process: Measure, Engage, and Communicate. Part of this includes measuring our social value contributions.

In the last 2 years we have gone from strength to strength in delivering on our commitment to continually increase on our social value ambitions. Last year we have generated £287,304 of social value, a 48% increase since the previous year. Whilst some of this value is through charity donations and fundraising, we place greater emphasis on contributing our time, expertise, ideas, and people resource to our local communities. This included:

• Fundraising for the Alzheimer’s Society

• Fundraising and Volunteering for Grinling Gibbons Primary School

• Volunteering for the Dragons Den Initiative with CACT

• Volunteering for the St Mungo’s Garden Project

• Operations Team Canal Litter Picking with our client

• Taking part in the CACT Upbeats Walk

• Donating Christmas Trees to St Mungo’s

• Christmas Present Wrapping for Lewisham Local

• And much more!

We would love the opportunity to collaborate with you on our initiatives within our local communities. Our local community partnerships include:

• Patrons of Charlton Athletic Community Trust

• Partners with St Mungos Homeless Charity

• Partners with Street Trees for Living

• Working with organisations to support recruitment and education including Workpath and Lewisham Local

Our colleagues are our number one asset, and our goal is to provide you with multi-skilled colleagues who not only keep your space clean, but are confident in having positive interactions with your customers and visitors. That’s why we are always ‘Putting People First’ (one of our four pillars in our Better Places strategy) and invest in the wellbeing of all our colleagues by providing a wide range of benefits, training, and support.

Delivering IOSH Training

We’re an IOSH accredited training centre and over the past year, our HSQE Manager, Chris Cain, has delivered the ‘IOSH Managing Safely’ and ‘IOSH Environment for Business’ courses to a number of our colleagues and service partners. We’ve trained and upskilled over 100 colleagues so far, demonstrating that we truly care about our colleague’s progression and development. We’re working to deliver these courses across the service lines we deliver to encourage greater understanding of H&S and to improve safety performance.

Safe Call and Ask Monica

We want to build and encourage a positive workplace culture through trust and are committed to maintaining the highest standards of honesty and accountability, to ensure our colleagues have a supportive, safe and inclusive place to work. We have recently partnered with Safecall, a whistleblowing hotline provider, to ensure our colleagues are able to raise concerns openly and confidentially.

We’ve also introduced ‘Ask Monica’ – a codeword that our colleagues can use to let people know they feel unsafe, either in the workplace or at home. We want to keep our colleagues safe from difficult and challenging situations including modern slavery, human trafficking, fraud, abuse, exploitation and bribery. We want to safeguard victims that are faced with danger and using a codeword allows us to support, help and guide our colleagues away from the situation to safety. Our colleagues are able to access information on our Ask Monica video on our online training platform, UhUb.

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Please contact your Contract Manager for more information on our sustainability, social value, and people initiatives – we’d love the opportunity to collaborate with you.