This is our very first quarterly blog on our ESG research and actions. Bringing together all of our purposes and our activity into our ESG strategy has made a positive impression on our team and our business. Our blog is our tool to share practice and to make us accountable to share progress every 12 weeks!

Our journey started early in 2022 where we sought the opinions and advice on our ESG strategy from our staff, external clients and candidates.  We wanted to know what our core objectives should be and what was important to our team and market.  This exercise created a consensus that we could create the most positive impact within the education sector; advising the next generation on careers, interviews, work skills, and the recruitment knowledge we have built up across our 251 years as a collective.  Our links with the Company of Cutlers in Sheffield presented us with an obvious route to start this – through their Better Learners, Better Workers (BLBW) programme

BLBW is a careers-led learning programme co-designed with employers to help young people across South Yorkshire to develop the knowledge, skills and behaviours required to succeed in life and work.  We have partnered to this year long programme to provide the students/Ambassadors with experiences of workplaces, and encounters with employers and employees.  Since November, we have participated in two events, providing an interactive session with over 70 students discussing interview preparation, skills, capabilities and different career paths.

The programme is developed to engage with Ambassadors, aged 13-16, at a point where they may be considering part-time jobs or what to do post-education, whether that be an apprenticeship, apply to university or go straight into the world of work. We hope this will open the Ambassadors’ eyes to the multiple possibilities in their lives.

The impact on our team has been significant – stepping away from the normal day job for a few hours, using their experience to benefit a different group and developing a very different sense of job satisfaction has been very powerful and rewarding.

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To emphasize the importance of ESG to Pratap Partnership, and to keep it front-of-mind, we created a dedicated Our Purpose page on our website at the end of September.

It is important to not forget the three areas of ESG – Environmental, Social and Governance. Although some pillars have more of a precedence within certain businesses (it would appear ‘social’ within Pratap Partnership), improvements can always be made within each of the sectors.

Environmental

• Like many businesses, we rely heavily on coffee! We were shocked to find out that 29,000 plastic and aluminium coffee pods go to landfill every minute. Back in December, we started to buy our coffee pods from Grind, a sustainable coffee company.  The coffee beans are sourced from smallholders around the world; and every pod is organic, biodegradable, and plastic-free.
• As are our team enjoy a hybrid working pattern, the office can be left unattended on certain days.  We have our heating on timer thermostats, to ensure that we are only heating the office when needed.
• We recycle our printer ink and toner through HP Planet Partners, a free recycling program, so that they become new products and don’t end up in oceans or landfills.

Social

• As mentioned above, we have partnered with BLBW to provide the next generation confidence, knowledge and aspirations for the world or work.
• We announced our Charity Partners – Business Beats Cancer and Martins Mountain. More to come on this topic.
• Over the Christmas period, rather than taking gifts to some of our clients and candidates, we offered to make a donation to their business charity of choice.
• All of the Christmas gifts to our team came from the superb Yorkshire business and our local neighbour – Farmer Copleys.
• In our continuous attempt to raise awareness of key topics, our very own Nicola Worrow shared her story on Menopause and what practices businesses can implement to create a safe and inclusive working environment. Read more here.

Governance

• We continue to increase diversity on our Board Meetings by having Claire Screeton, our new Finance Director, join the quarterly meetings.  Having a diverse board, each bringing their own personal background and experiences, results in diversity of thought and better decisions can be made for the business.

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Thank you for reading our inaugural ESG newsletter.  Our aim is to provide greater transparency around our progress on these efforts, and hopefully in a manner that makes it relatable to all of our clients across Yorkshire and the East Midlands.