Archives for November 2023

Our Commitment to Fundraising for St Mungo’s

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Since joining forces with St Mungo’s, we’ve led an amalgamation of work to support ending homelessness. This has included volunteering, training, collaborative events, but also and crucially, fundraising. To continue to provide their much-needed services and put an end to homelessness, vital funds are needed. This makes fundraising for St Mungo’s an important part of our partnership.

We’ve committed to raising £5000 for St Mungo’s this year through donations, and are a third of the way there since announcing our partnership in July.

While we believe that giving our time and expertise to our charity partner is invaluable, it’s so important to raise sufficient funds that can really help and make a difference. These often go towards vital resources and services that provide support and help people to move away from rough sleeping.

ArcelorMittal Orbit Abseil

We’ve been thinking outside of the box in terms of fundraising events. Our brave and inspiring teams have gone above and beyond to raise money, including abseiling off of the ArcelorMittal Orbit in London from 262ft. Our colleagues tackled the challenge head-on on 2nd June 2023, raising £920 from this event alone.

Take the Lead

Our August challenge, ‘Take the Lead’ saw some of our Regular Cleaning mascots take on the distance of a sponsored marathon (26 miles) or an ultra-marathon (50 miles) throughout the month of August. Pixie alone (left) raised £125, earning a St Mungo’s bandana to wear on walks.

Football Event

Our charity football game on 15th September, saw twelve teams taking part in a tournament to raise money and awareness for the homelessness charity. This event was a huge success, with many of our clients and partners forming teams to collaboratively support this cause.

Events like this one not only raise funds to support homelessness, but also raise awareness. Collaborative events like this one inspire conversations and knowledge sharing around the issues surrounding homlessness in the UK. This can lead to even more people getting involved and working together to end rough sleeping.

Upcoming Events

We’ve got a variety of projects and events planned for the Christmas period to continue our commitment to fundraising for St Mungo’s. Since 2018, we have committed to volunteering and fundraising events over the period.

Some of the events planned this year include cooking meals, decorating some of St Mungo’s services and a Christmas gift appeal to give our colleagues the chance to donate gifts that we’ve wrapped up together. To start the new year right, we also have a London Winter Walk planned in January to bring our fundraising efforts straight into 2024.

Our supply chain collaboration programme wins Planet Mark sustainability award

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Setting the benchmark in supply chain engagement

Three years ago, we launched our sustainable business strategy ‘Better Places’. The intention was to drive sustainability through every facet of the business, and we developed a set of strategic objectives under four main pillars.

This structure helped guide us and allowed us to view sustainability as a concept and driver for change in areas not normally associated with or impacted by ESG efforts. These included our people development and collaboration with our supply chain e.g.

  1. Operations – delivering chemical free cleaning products that reduce plastic waste
  2. Colleague training and wellbeing – ensuring a happy, healthy and sustainable workforce
  3. Procurement – collaborating with our supply chain for mutual benefit

Our Net Zero journey has not been a straight road and we cannot travel it alone. Our destiny and success are tied to that of our service partners and clients up and down the supply chain.
We quickly realised that we had to adopt a ‘one team approach’ to influence and lead effectively with the help of Planet Mark (our certification partner).

As our data is verified by Planet Mark it aligns to important globally recognised initiatives:

  • Science Based Targets Initiative Net Zero Standard
  • UN backed Race to Zero

Engaging our supply chain effectively

Only with the support of our service partners could we achieve our Net Zero ambitions – and they theirs. The currency required in our exchanges was data, and data of the correct format, type and quality. 

We also began to see ourselves as the conduit for the exchange of this ESG data up and down our supply chain. Amongst other things, this:

– supported certification

– improved sustainable decision making

– helps move us to NetZero more effectively

The challenge was getting the data from a range of different shaped and sized service partners, some of whom did not have the systems in place to measure and extract the data required. Others had no idea of the importance of Net Zero and implications of not starting a journey or having a plan for achieving this goal.

Creating a supply chain engagement programme

The concept was to create a supplier engagement programme with a requirement to educate, mutually support and ultimately deliver reliable data which is so valuable in supporting sustainable business growth. Our programme is designed to continually evolve, meeting new technological challenges, mitigating risks, and grasping opportunities to be better as we travel towards our 2030 Net Zero objectives. Our Service Partner Data Capture Roadmap began in July 2022, structured to develop our ‘one team approach’, by being transparent and supportive.

To drive the programme forward, we had to achieve buy-in and understanding. In some situations, this meant assisting those smaller service partners by supporting the building of frameworks to ensure their effective data-capture. All this was done in collaboration with Planet Mark. This ensured that what was collected could be effectively used in certification measurement.

The success of the programme has meant that:

  • We now have in place a robust process to collect and share data from our supply chain
  • We’ve gained client trust through collaboration
  • Our Service Partners are more knowledgeable and confident talking about emissions and challenging their suppliers to deliver
  • Two service partners (Mayflower and Wessex) joined Planet Mark through this collaborative approach
  • We can now provide emissions data for our clients down to a specific building, and for the products we offer

We’re pleased our effort has resulted in winning Best Supply Chain Engagement at the Planet Mark Awards. We continue to set benchmarks with Planet Mark of how and what can be done with a challenging supply chain.

Round Up: Reflecting on Thank Your Cleaner Day 2023

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We’re reflecting on Thank Your Cleaner Day and the feedback we’ve received.

As October came to a close, we took a moment to look back at this year’s celebration of Thank Your Cleaner Day. We want to reflect on the feedback we’ve received from colleagues and how this has initiated important conversations around our benefits and rewards.

Thank Your Cleaner Day is a celebration of the hard work that cleaning teams do to contribute to business success. Their often invisible role is vital in maintaining clean, healthy, and inspiring environments that are ready to use each day.

This year, we aligned Thank Your Cleaner Day with our core value to ‘Make a Difference’ for our colleagues. This day let us spend some time with our valued cleaning colleagues and celebrate their ongoing hard work. We seized this opportunity to engage with our cleaning teams, explain our benefits package, and most importantly, listen to their feedback.

Our aim was to understand how our colleagues are utilising our benefits and how we can enhance awareness and relevance. By taking the time to listen to the challenges our colleagues face in their work, we’re working on strategies to better support them and make improvements.

We’ve had some truly inspiring conversations with colleagues and received an outpouring of support and feedback. We’re now taking steps to change and enhance our colleague rewards as a result of their input. Our priority is that all teams feel valued at work, with rewards and benefits that are relevant to them.

We’re incredibly proud to see our values in action every day, and we’re committed to continually supporting our colleagues. Thank you to our remarkable cleaning teams for all that you do. Together, we’re building a brighter and more sustainable future.