Member Article

Responsible Business – one year on

Estelle Brachlianoff, Senior Executive Vice-President at Veolia UK & Ireland, shares the knowledge gained as Business in the Community’s ’Responsible Business of the Year’ 2016/2017

’A Business That Makes Nothing but Money Is a Poor Business’ – Henry Ford

Henry Ford never said anything more impactful to business than this famous quote and I believe his business mindset continues to ring true to this day – being responsible in business is not just the right thing to do, but the best thing to do.

Our experience is that people want to buy from, work with and partner with social responsible businesses. Here are our four key takeaways from our experiences over the last 12 months as Business in the Community’s ‘Responsible Business of the Year’:

• Employees: as a business, your responsibility begins with your people – therefore, looking after your people is fundamental. This can be done through investing in learning and development, and ensuring inclusivity at all levels to help attract and retain talent. In fact, winning the award highlighted how our 14,000-strong team has made responsible thinking part of how we do business and so to thank them for their induvial involvement we’ve held internal Local Hero Awards this year. As well as office based staff across the UK, operational sites employing over 7,000 front-line staff have participated and held 50 Local Hero Award events to help celebrate our success and achievements company wide. From this, 89% of attendees said the Local Hero Awards were a good way to celebrate our success.
• Environment: the circular economy is our bread and butter, as we’re constantly helping our customers reduce their waste and help conserve their resources, by keeping them in the loop as long as possible. To highlight the innovative business models needed in three key industry sectors: manufacturing, pharmaceutical & chemical and food & beverage we launched our second Imagine 2050 Report during our year as Responsible Business of the Year to show how we believe businesses must change their mindsets to think circular, rather than linear, in order to meet resource and waste challenges of the future. Feedback from the event has revealed our customers appreciated learning about how they can implement the circular economy, which shows the importance of making sustainable business practices relevant to difference business sectors. However, every business, large and small, can reduce their environmental impact and become more sustainable by implementing small but significant changes. For example, I would encourage all companies to undertake an environmental audit to see how they can improve in areas, such as reducing packaging, increasing recycling rates and saving vital resources, like energy and water.
• Education: the future of business is very much underpinned by empowering millennial talent, and it’s not money that motivates this crowd. Instead, they want to work for a company that’s making a positive impact on society and whose values match theirs – whether this is making a difference in the lives of customers, in the local community, environmentally or ideally a combination of all three. This is why we continue to employ over 300 apprentices and run a graduate programme in addition to providing leadership development, as part of a wider commitment to upskilling our workforce. To ensure we recognise the vital role apprenticeships play in our business we hosted our second National Apprentice of the Year awards at the House of Commons in November. A key learning for us has been assessing not only our current but future potential skill gaps, which meant we are able to hone our learning and development needs to help bridge this gap. By doing so we hope to ensure the home-grown talent we need to grow as a business – and by showing gratitude along the way to retain this talent, too.
• Employment: a true characteristic of a responsible business is helping people overcome disadvantages by increasing access to sustainable employment. I believe it’s more about inclusivity and attracting talent than gender, ethnicity, sexuality, age or disability and I also believe having a culture that welcomes differences and appreciates differences contributes to business success. This is why we pledged a 10% operative recruitment commitment, focused on employing people from marginalised groups, such as long-term unemployed or former prisoners, which we delivered over the course of the year. In fact, during our year as Responsible Business of the Year 22% of our new operative recruits were from marginalised groups – and this is something we aim to maintain. In terms of business this has helped us showcase our efforts to improve the local communities in which we work, which in turn has helped to further improve Veolia’s public image and further strengthen our relationships with our consumers.

Finally, one year on, my conviction that ‘people, planet, profit’ often referred to as ‘The Triple Bottom Line’ is stronger than ever. I’d also like to take this opportunity to congratulate all the entries from this year’s awards and wish the new ‘Responsible Business of the Year’ winner, Anglian Water, every success as we pass the baton on.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Estelle Brachlianoff .