There’s value all around us. We find it when we look for the opportunities within. Simple shifts to the structures we follow – when done collectively – add up to systemic change.
This week: five ways to find value in what you’re already doing, from the data you report and the budgets you hold to the menus you serve and the rules you write.
🌿 Link KPIs to insurance, earn a premium bonus
🌿 Ask your caterer for one veggie swap, cut carbon and calories
🌿 Spend your apprenticeship levy, grow green skills
🌿 Back employee volunteering, lift wellbeing
🌿 Shape procurement specifications, keep valuable materials in use
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Sustainability KPIs you already track and report, such as emissions, could also be linked to your insurance terms. The Federation of European Risk Management Associations (FERMA) takes you through the process in five steps. Step two says each target “should reflect a level of ambition that goes beyond the ‘business as usual’ trajectory”. For example, Swiss Federal Railways, whose in-house insurer worked with FERMA, can earn a bonus of up to 5% of its net premium by beating its emissions target, or pay a penalty for missing it. [Read more]
Lunches a caterer already serves your staff could also work for your climate goals and their health. Six English workplace cafeterias swapped one meat main for a vegetarian dish, without price change or telling customers, in a University of Oxford trial. That raised the odds of customers choosing a vegetarian main by 41%. Meals averaged 8.5% less greenhouse gas and 26 fewer calories, with no significant change in revenue, meals sold or food waste. To scale this, the authors suggest “embedding vegetarian meal availability targets in catering contracts”. [Read more]
If your annual pay bill is over £3 million, you already pay the apprenticeship levy, and in England it could also build skills in your sustainability team. While your levy funds last, they can pay up to £14,000 of training and assessment for Skills England’s corporate responsibility and sustainability practitioner apprenticeship, for staff in roles such as sustainability coordinator and ESG administrator. New levy funds now expire after 12 months if you do not use them. [Discover here]
Supporting employees who volunteer regularly in their own time can benefit your business, as “improved health and wellbeing can in turn increase productivity”, according to the HM Treasury guidance that sets the government’s standard price for wellbeing. Using that price, a Department for Culture, Media and Sport study valued the wellbeing gain from people’s own unpaid volunteering with groups or clubs at an estimated £673 per volunteer on average in England. The gain was statistically significant only for people volunteering at least monthly. [Read more]
You already write specifications and buying rules for suppliers who make your defence or aerospace parts. Those rules could also keep your suppliers’ high-grade scrap in aerospace use, instead of being sold off. Original equipment manufacturers “strongly shape supplier practices and recycling potential through specifications and procurement control”, says UK Critical Minerals Intelligence Centre. Across defence and aerospace, it estimates this is worth £83 million a year for nickel alloys before about £8 million in costs, against £71 million from selling scrap. It depends heavily on keeping scrap separate and on contracts with remelting firms. [Explore here]
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