Making a positive difference

Business Stream chief executive Jo Dow argues that utility companies have wider responsibilities than those directly relating to customers and shareholders. She explains how her business is putting environmental issues at its core.

As a water retailer, our role is to deliver great service for our customers’ and to deliver a positive return for our shareholders. If we do both and comply with legislation and regulations, then arguably our key stakeholders will be happy, but is that enough? We don’t think so.

As a progressive business, we want to look beyond profits and commit to making a positive contribution to society and the environment. We surveyed our staff to ask for their views and their feedback was clear – they want to work for an organisation that makes a positive difference, not just for our customers, but also for their colleagues, the environment and the local communities that we operate within.  It was from this feedback that our vision to Make a Positive Difference was born.

Having made that commitment, it was really important that we put our words into actions and set targets to bring our vision to life.  We did so by aligning our plan to the Business in the Community Responsible Business Map, which is designed to help responsible businesses to assess the contribution they make to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, with a key focus on supporting healthy communities and a healthy environment.

There are clearly synergies between our core business and the environment and so that was an obvious place to start.  We are passionate about water efficiency and to date have helped our business and public sector customers save over 43 billion litres of water – that’s the equivalent of saving half a billion bathtubs of water. To build on this momentum, we announced a pledge to help our customers reduce their water consumption by 20 per cent. We believe that as a responsive forward-thinking water retailer we have a responsibility to do everything we can to help businesses to use water wisely, which in turn will help to support the UK-wide targets to reduce carbon emissions.

To further support this ambition, we have partnered with Waterwise, the leading NGO on water efficiency to help promote the importance of water efficiency and conservation to retail customers across the UK. We are working together with other water retailers and wholesalers to share ideas and best practice, and to promote more ambitious water saving targets for customers across the UK.  We believe in practicing what we preach, which is why we applied for and were recently awarded, the Waterwise Water Efficiency Checkmark for our head office – becoming only the third business in the UK to be accredited.

Beyond that, we have introduced a range of initiatives to support our plans to become a circular office which promotes and encourages the re-use of materials.  This has included removing all single-use plastic bottles from our vending machines; providing our employees with re-usable water bottles and coffee cups; installing drinking water fountains that allow us to monitor the number of plastic bottles saved as a result; and increasing recycling points across our offices.

From a healthy communities perspective, we were keen to invest in programmes that enabled our teams to support local communities, by working with various groups including primary school children, teenagers and school leavers. We partnered with Business in the Community (Scotland) to develop our volunteering programme, providing our people with the opportunity to spend a day running enterprise workshops at local primary schools and, at a more practical level, helping to improve the outdoor spaces at local schools. We are also working with Career Ready to provide mentoring and work experience placements to senior school students and we’ve enhanced our Modern Apprenticeship Scheme, which is now in its second year.

To maximise our charitable efforts, we introduced a charity panel, identifying charities whose values are closely aligned to our own. Working with charity: water; the Marine Conservation Society; Macmillan Cancer Support; SAMH; and Dementia Support, we have an ambitious programme of fundraising and volunteering events planned and have raised over £3,000 in the past three months alone.

And to support our employees we have invested in initiatives designed to improve their health and wellbeing. This has included enhancing our family friendly policies; providing mental health first aiders across our offices; offering free health screening and flu jabs; wellness sessions at lunchtime; and introducing an Employee Assistance Programme which gives our people access to free 24/7 confidential support on a wide range of issues.

Looking ahead, our ambition in this space is huge, we have a long list of ideas and initiatives that we want to implement over the months and years ahead, including carbon offsetting to help contribute towards the government’s net-zero carbon targets.

Whilst there is a growing expectation on businesses to behave responsibly, we’re not doing this because we have been asked to, we’re doing it because it’s the right thing to do – and we’re already reaping the benefits. Aside from helping others outside the business, it has really resonated with our employees too and renewed their motivation to come to work, knowing they can make a positive difference beyond their ‘day job’. Every organisation has a role to play in inspiring, engaging and driving positive change for the environment and society as a whole – and it is a responsibility we should all take seriously.