So, what does it mean?

‘In the broadest sense, sustainability refers to the ability to maintain or support a process continuously over time. In business and policy contexts, sustainability seeks to prevent the depletion of natural or physical resources, so that they will remain available for the long term’.

In terms of our industries – Recruitment, Healthcare, Catering and Education there are many ways we can adapt the workplace to create sustainability. A good idea is for a business to have a Sustainability policy. Many large national and international companies request to see a company’s Sustainability policy when they are supplying to them to ensure the company is being efficient as possible to protect what they have around them.

Simple measures can be put in place and most businesses will find they have common goals when doing so.

‘Sustainable business practices lead to the adoption of greener technologies and allow smaller businesses to thrive. Sustainable businesses also value people more and hence ensure better employment practices. Thus, sustainability has a key role to play in employment and in turn makes the economy more sustainable.’

Full Circle Employment Agency has developed a sustainability policy which covers all areas of their recruitment – Care, Catering and Education. The aim of our plan is to have our business as one that will take thoughtful and relevant steps to conserve natural resources and work without negatively impacting the environment, community, people, or society. Some of the areas we have covered in our policy is how we can use less energy within the business.

We operate from an office in a business centre, so we analyse and work with the centre on ways to reduce our usage. We’ve looked at our resources and questioned can be we reduce this or change to something more efficient. Over recent years we’ve installed cloud-based systems to minimise paper usage which also helps us work smarter and more efficient. We’ve donated broken and unwanted office equipment such as PC’s, Printers, and monitors to charities for upcycling.

We look at products and packaging, can we change this, how can we keep it to a minimum. We have significantly reduced our postage where we can over recent years which has a knock-on effect to reduce emissions. We changed the way we operate to lower emissions, and we’ve stopped overfilling the kettle, so we don’t waste water. That might seem like something very minor but if every business did this it would save gallons and gallons of wastewater.

‘Sustainability is very important to employees and is an important indicator of employee engagement, retention, performance, and well-being. Employees are attracted to companies that focus on sustainability as part of their business strategy because it gives meaning to the work, they do…. According to an employee engagement study 74% of employees said their job is more fulfilling when they’re given the chance to make a positive impact on social and environmental issues, with 70% indicating they’d be more loyal to a company that helps them contribute to solutions to these issues.’

Being an employment business where we supply relief staff, having a loyal high performing team is key to us being able to provide a great service to our clients that use us, so the constant need for us analyse what we do in our daily practices is key.

The more sustainable we are the better our business will be and the service we provide will be even better, so the message is to keep asking the questions, what can we change, do we need it, is there an alternative, how can we reduce it?