Date posted: 22nd Sep 2023
By Carl Wright,
As a partner and head of the grants and transactional services offering, I’m also very proud to lead the sustainability focus for the firm. As our business expands, we recognise the need to drive sustainable financial growth positively, shaping the future of our firm and the development of our people and communities.
The firm is committed to identifying and improving its sustainability credentials. As a progressive business, we want to be innovators in our field and champion both environmental and social change.
Sustainability is also important for me on a personal level because, as a father of two young children, I want to ensure that their future is protected. Working with my local community is also something I value, having seen first-hand the impact that the grants I help deliver have on local businesses. It’s also rewarding to see how giving back, even in a small way, can make a big difference in people’s lives.
We started our journey by recognising the key role that our business can play within the community and embracing this responsibility, with the aim of embedding sustainability as a pillar of our culture of continuous improvement.
In 2023, we launched our first sustainability report which you can view here. Producing this report challenged us to review our processes understand the decisions we make, and how we run our offices and think carefully about how we best support our communities. It’s provided us with a benchmark to look at how we can do better.
The report project was more positive than expected and we achieved significant engagement from the teams demonstrating a real appetite for change. There have been challenges but these were more around the pace of change. Overall, it was incredibly valuable as it helped us to focus on what is important to the firm and the teams. It’s definitely a work in progress and we will learn as we go on our journey, together.
So, this begs the question – Where are we now?
The report helped us draw a line in the sand. It gave us a firm starting point to track our impact and see what we can achieve by working together as a team. Since starting our journey, we have made several changes to reduce our carbon footprint and benefit our teams, and our communities.
Some of the improvements we have made to reduce our environmental impact include reducing paper usage, switching to motion-activated low-energy LED lighting, and implementing recycling schemes. We have also introduced a more flexible heating system to reduce heat waste.
In terms of our community support, we have become Friends of the MFC Foundation and York Cares, giving back to the communities in which we proudly live and work. We have also launched a volunteering scheme.
Volunteering has benefits for both colleagues and the charities they give time to. With economic uncertainties and the cost-of-living crisis impacting local communities, we understand that it is important to support the teams to give something back, so we offer one day’s paid volunteering leave each year for all colleagues. Members of the team have already carried out several volunteer days at various charities and have thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
In fact, one of the things I am most proud of is how many of our colleagues have engaged with our campaign to become a more responsible business. They have set up foodbanks at each office, taken part in charity challenges and signed up for the volunteering scheme. We even now have a sustainability action team with representatives at each of our offices to help direct our thinking and drive initiatives forward across the firm.
It’s so positive to see this movement towards a collective sustainable mindset echoing around the firm.
What’s next?
We are currently in the process of launching an electric vehicle salary sacrifice scheme that will allow our colleagues to purchase an environmentally friendly vehicle, through the business.
We plan to develop our volunteering programme to help more local good causes and work on further reducing our carbon footprint.
We are also exploring options for third-party accreditation to help us continue our journey towards a more responsible business. We are working on a sustainability plan that will enable us to demonstrate and track our progress so we can hold ourselves accountable.
Although we are proud of what we have achieved so far, we understand that there is much more that can be done. It’s a journey, not a destination, however, the great news is that we are enjoying the process and the firm is now pulling together towards a better future for us all.
To find out more about our sustainability journey, see here.
