Where do I start - Corporate responsibility.

[Anotherlongdrive]

2 months ago, I started work at a company as a director. The company was a small company but grown massively in the 10 years it has been open.

My role is to integrate new acquisitions and also to support the business in their reporting to board.

They have no form or corporate responsibility charter at all. Environmentally, I think they are quite poor too. But I come from a very environment conscious company, so that could be just me.

Anyway, it looks like I am now also director of corporate responsibility. They especially want to focus working and supporting the local community and improving our carbon footprint. The CEO seems to believe there will be some financial benefit to the carbon footprint reduction.

The local community piece is because mo one in the local area knows us. It's quite deprived, high unemployment. We struggle to find highly skilled engineers, as we are very specialist and the CEO wonders if working with schools would encourage young people to train in what we do. Though it is quite dangerous work, you can being training at college and getting the technical qualifications before training to work in the field. We work across the UK so the plan woild be to start working with schools in this area, the thee areas where we struggle to fine the people we need.

My question is......where the hell do I start with this?

CEO is quite aware I have no clue, but has every faith 'I will work it out'. Nice he has faith, but honestly i am baffled.

Does anyone have an experience of starting this kind of thing from scratch?

Sorry typed too fast on some posts and made a muck of them. Hopefully, it still makes sense

The STEM Ambassador programme could be a really easy win. www.stem.org.uk/stem-ambassadors

Talk to your regional STEM ambassador hub. The hub can help you link up with local schools, provide free DBS checks, and training for your employees. You encourage your employees to sign up to be STEM Ambassadors and support volunteering time.

Provides a really useful framework for your activities and a entry point into schools (which is not always easy to achieve).

Beehives on the roof?
Green roof?
No bottle water machines - plumbed in only

I would like if staff were able to participate in the planting

Well speaking as an engineer, make sure you're consulting (genuinely. In an anonymous feedback form if needed) staff about this type of stuff.

I understand your good intentions but tbh a lot of support and,/or senior staff find HR / strategic level little projects like this impose them and if done badly it's a bit of an imposition.

Frankly this is reminding me of the time I was working 80hr weeks on a large, multisite rollout, travelling huge distances across the UK to ridiculous deadlines, firefighting. We had a scheduled rollout rehearsal planned with me leading one third of the sites, reporting up into the lead of the national rollout,and I got some shitty emails chasing me, from our new head of corp responsibility for my local office asking if my department (consisting of me, 2 assistant engineers who were doing the night shift work & an uni placement student) could try harder to attend the Friday morning fundraising events. It was stuff like cake sales, donate clothes, stalls with local sellers doing scarves and jewellery etc.

I'm not un-interested in that sort of stuff but frankly I have an already stressful job to, well,get the feck on with.

Your planting trees might be perceived similarly if it's handled badly.

Just thought I'd provide an engineer's viewpoint, having been at the brunt end of various schemes which seem Tobe conjured up by other office staff who've no idea what engineer workloads look like on the ground.

@NoraThePessimist that's very true. But that's ok, as I said before I am close to the operations because I dont like making changes until i know the impacts on everyone it affects.

I can imagine some people dont take those things into account. But I have worked with engineers in one form or another for alot of my career. Including change management. That's why I am there for acquisitions. Because I can manage large groups of engineers, keep they happy and keep them with a company. As my evidenced in previous roles. I manage to do this and handle the fact that on first meeting engineers, usually, underestimate my knowledge and abilities.

This would be mainly for head office staff doing this. It will be by choice only. If engineers wanted in through choice, that would be fine. The engineers are what makes us money, I have no intention of pulling them off jobs unless they show a real passion for it.

I do have a group of engineers who are very passionate about apprenticeships and growing our talent. I would need them for that. But likely they will come from a pool of people who cant work in the field due to long term illness or injury. If they want to come back to actual work but not ready for the field they come in and support the office staff. Especially the staff that plan field work.

We are a pretty happy bunch. Mostly

Bobmcbob thank you for the link I will take a look. That's sounds interesting.

Woodlandwitch yes we definitely need to work on the water dispenser/one use cups.

I think I will mainly be starting with what the directors can do, without too much disruption to others first.

Posted too soon.

I will work my way up events including other people

You sound like you're going to be rolling it out in a more empathetic way than the orgs I've worked in, sounds good!

What about your work’s supply chain, have you considered whether that can be improved from a sustainability perspective?

@NoraThePessimist I hope so. I have never been one to steam roll people. If anything stops change, it's that.

@beverlymarsh I havent looked at that but will add it to the list. That will be something I will need to get the technical directors in on, I would imagine.

Sustainability is one of the things potential clients ask our groups sales directors about. That along environment concerns and modern slavery charter seem to be the things potential clients ask about. Well there are other things, but these 3 come up all the time, according to the GSD.

HR are taking care of the Modern Slaveey Charter.

You could look at similar companies’ websites for inspiration and see what they are doing in terms of sustainability initiatives/reporting.

Depending on certain factors, your place may have a legal obligation to carry out modern slavery reporting already. More information here: www.gov.uk/guidance/publish-an-annual-modern-slavery-statement

Hi, I'm actually one of the consultants a previous poster referred to, I've been working with organisations on CSR/sustainability for many years. Your situation isn't uncommon, we've produced a short eBook Sustainable Business Essentials which will give you the lowdown on what to think about. Hoping this isn't contravening community rules as it could be seen as promotional, but it's free (in exchange for an email) and will help you get going. You can get it at www.terrafiniti.com/SB-essentials

I was going to say STEM Ambassadors, too. Also, if there's a local business/education partnership, they will probably also have links with schools.

If you contact your local wildlife trust, they will probably have details for corporate sponsorship, either as donations, or volunteer days.

Think about whether you want to focus efforts - we're more likely to get support at work for activities around the environment and health care, but there's also a charity matching scheme, so if you volunteer at least 50h a year with a particular charity, they will match it on funds. This helps a lot of local sports clubs, youth groups and so on, because people are already giving their time. They'll also match funds raised. But collections or activities organised through work should be around education and/or the environment.

I believe there's also some sort of agreement our suppliers are meant to sign up to about sustainability and ethical practices, but I don't really have an involvement with that side of things, and haven't read the CSR report closely enough.

@beverlymarsh I believe there is something similar, but it's not explicitly called that.

@FatTail thank you very much for that. That's very helpful.

@EBearhug thank you. That's very helpful. The environment and education part really have my team excited. They were coming with ideas yesterday.

What exciting for me about this is that it new. But also, it's been run by women. Our company is man heavy, in and our ofbthe office. But, now there are quite senior managers and directors that are women. The HRBP and groups sales director are women. My team is female only. Obviously ibwont be excluding men, but it's so exciting that its female driven. That's another angle that the STEM piece comes into. Encourage young women into the industry.

And the help here has been fantastic.