Many organisations approach their ESG responsibilities via individual strategies, but this proves ineffective. The three elements feed into one core mission, so at Morson, we’ve created a strategy that places people, planet and profit centrally – and equally – to every aspect of our offering.

People are the bloodline of Morson, and we only want to work with, for and on behalf of the very best. So, we put great efforts into our personal and professional development programmes and regularly analyse our candidate attraction brand, engaging with our communities – schools, colleges, universities and SMEs – to hire from within our regions to create thriving local economies and to increase the value we add to society.

Processes are in place to minimise harm to our people – staff, contractors, candidates, clients, visitors and our supply chain – so we can proactively manage workplace risk, ensuring we implement only cost-effective, agile solutions, thus creating an environment to help our people achieve their full potential. This might seem purely people-focused, but it actually feeds into our approach to protecting the planet, because we inherently rely on people to achieve our aims.

As a business, we’ve demonstrated our commitment to Government-driven environment and sustainability missions by pledging to achieve net zero on scopes 1 and 2 of carbon emissions by the end of 2023 – a milestone that is creeping ever closer. This is something that’s particularly important to us, because we operate a large commercial vehicle fleet for certain client contracts. Our carbon footprint isn’t just about people coming to and from work, it is central to our delivery and because we are one of few talent specialists to offer this service, we in turn have created a larger carbon footprint than many of our competitors. So, we focus on doing something about it.

David Robinson, group fleet manager, has worked hard to reduce the company car emission levels through the introduction of ultra-low emission electric and hybrid vehicles, and had overseen the installation of additional infrastructure to support that, by adding charging points to our office car parks and at our various company HQs.

However, the majority of our commercial fleet is still made up of diesel vehicles and until better technology is developed to enable us to have electric and hybrid vehicles across 100% of our fleet, in the meantime we’ve committed to offset all commercial vehicle fuel through a partnership with Shell. For every litre of fuel we purchase, we pay an additional amount to offset the carbon emissions from that litre of fuel, which means our commercial fleet – that collectively accounts for more than 80% of the Morson Group’s carbon emissions – is now neutral in its operations.

We’re also looking into how we can make greater efficiencies elsewhere in our business. For example, we’ve invested capital into LED lighting and motion sensors to reduce our energy consumption in meeting rooms, corridors and lifts which are vacant. We’re looking at how we can generate more power on site, such as installing solar panels at our head office and in our office car parks, and we now issue our quarterly HSQE bulletins to staff, which feature the encouragement of greener behaviours around energy reduction, reduced consumption and waste reduction, including recycling.

Next on our ‘Road to Net Zero’ agenda, we are looking at reducing our carbon impact in line with scope 3 emissions, ensuring that everything we buy, hire or lease – whether for our own consumption, to develop our supply chain or to better that of our clients’ – is reducing our environmental impact through the development of the circular economy. We’re scouring the market for the best measurement and reporting technologies that will pinpoint the areas of the business we’ve not already identified as being carbon hotspots, so we can make big changes in those areas.

While clients are keen to know we’re able to supply them with the best talent and can support them in their mission to achieve a carbon neutral position alongside our own agenda, they’re also keen for us to demonstrate how secure we are as a business when it comes to cyber security, business continuity and disaster recovery.

As well as maintaining a holistic viewpoint of how legislative changes such as Brexit and IR35 will impact our clients, we’ve achieved all the necessary ISO Standards required to demonstrate we go above and beyond to protect them: ISO27001 for Information Security Management, 14001 for Environmental Management, ISO45001 for Health and Safety Management, and ISO9001 for Quality Management. Possessing these standards provides external validation that clients can have faith in what we do from a governance perspective, which then has a positive impact on the business communities we are part of and the people who work with and for our business. And so, we come full circle in our ESG strategy; it’s all encompassing for our business and is wrapped around every service we offer.

The road to net zero is one that must be ventured in partnership with those you work closely with, so for clients who are as focused on ESG as we are, we collaborate closely to achieve our long-term sustainability goals together. Rather than seeing future carbon challenges as a hindrance, we instead view them as a great chance to improve what we do. With every threat comes an opportunity, which is something we must never forget. Though climate change is a huge global issue, in response there will be technology and methods of renewable and carbon neutral power generation that are currently only brainwaves of inspiration, will soon become available to us, and we’re in a prime position to capitalise on them, offering their benefits to our colleagues, clients and candidates.

There is no finish line in this mission. Instead, we must focus on always developing winning ESG strategies, and that’s what the Morson Group does inherently well.

For more information about our Net Zero commitment, how we can support your business to achieve its sustainability goals or any other issues relating to HSQE, get in touch at Gareth.Morris@morson.com. You may also be interested in our article on Modern Slavery mitigation