Gold for the Growth Company with major people award

Over recent months, the Growth Company has shared news of some fantastic awards and accreditations. Here we reflect on our progress and proudly announce our latest achievements - which are a real reflection of the way we’ve helped develop our organisation to fulfil our purpose and values.

We’ve achieved ‘Investor in People Gold’

We’re thrilled to let our Growth Company colleagues and our business partners know that we’ve achieved the ‘We invest in people gold accreditation’. This is a great achievement and was only achieved with the contribution and dedication of all our colleagues.

We’ve so much to celebrate – here are just some of our achievements outlined from the recent assessment:

• We demonstrated clear organisational vision and purpose as well as pride in our brand and understanding our impact on society.
• The assessment showed we have inspirational and reassuring leadership with supportive line management who advocate trust and empowerment.
• It’s clear that our core values are robust, and as an organisation we have a strong performance review process and colleagues have access to a range of effective learning solutions.
• We evidence collaboration and embrace change and continuous improvement.

To put it into perspective - only 17% of organisations achieve gold accreditation and, in real terms, it means that every single person across our organisation is involved in supporting each other and is doing their very best to make work better.  

From May through to July this year, the assessment process was an opportunity for us to listen to our colleagues – and from listening, we’ve learnt so much. We’ve got recommendations and an action plan, as well as some additional business unit information, so we can keep having follow-up conversations, making changes, keep improving and moving forward and realise our ambition to achieve the ‘Platinum’ award upon our next full assessment. 

We’re a ‘Real Living Wage Employer’

The Growth Company has been committed to paying real living wage for a number of years - we know how important this is to our colleagues, especially during this ongoing period of increased cost of living. We’re pleased to announce that we’ve been accredited as a Real Living Wage Employer and every colleague working in our organisation will earn a real living wage.

The Real Living Wage is higher than the government’s minimum, or National Living Wage, and is an independently calculated hourly rate of pay that’s based on the actual cost of living. It’s calculated each year and is announced by the Living Wage Foundation as part of Living Wage Week. It’ll be £10.90 from April 2023 for our colleagues, when any salary increases take effect in the business, with a higher rate of £11.95 for London - reflecting the higher costs of living in the capital. We’re one of 11,000 organisations who’ve voluntarily chose to pay the Real Living Wage.

We’ve committed to the ‘Armed Forces covenant’ pledge

In July, the Growth Company joined the Armed Forces Covenant. It’s a pledge which ensures no member of the Armed Forces community is unfairly treated, or left disadvantaged in their day-to-day lives.

As an organisation, we recognise the value serving personnel, reservists, veterans and their families bring to our business, and to the businesses and communities we serve across the UK. As part of our commitment, we have pledged to:

• Raise awareness among our colleagues and create focused training for colleagues who directly support veterans and those transitioning from the Armed Forces.
• Continue offering mental health support to colleagues.
• Build relationships with local communities.
• Review and improve policies relating to reservists, and extend our support to family and dependants of Armed Forces personnel.
• Attract veterans to work for The Growth Company by looking at guaranteed interview schemes for ex-Armed Forces, advertising vacancies through the Resettlement Programme and promoting The Growth Company as an Armed Forces friendly organisation.
• Promote and offer our suite of cross-group products and services to those who are leaving the Armed Forces – including support with starting their own business, access to training and qualifications, employability support, and transition support (such as help with budgeting, cooking and finding accommodation).

The Military Veterans and Reservists group is now our eighth Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) network - giving colleagues across our organsation who’ve served in the Armed Forces, and their families, the opportunity to meet like-minded individuals and allies who have similar lived experiences.

We’ve also achieved the ‘bronze award’ in the Defence Employer Recognition Scheme, which further reinforces our commitment to supporting ex-Armed Forces personnel, while encouraging other businesses we work with to do the same. Going forward, we’ll be working towards achieving the ‘silver award’.

We’ve closed gender pay gap

We’re proud to announce that our July 2022 EDI Board Report confirmed that we’ve closed the gender pay gap in that reporting period.

We’re proud to lead by example when it comes to inclusivity. We understand the benefits of having a diverse workforce, and we’re committed to championing equality and diversity among our people, clients and communities in which we work. This includes addressing gender equality and supporting women in the workplace.

The Growth Company recognises that closing the Gender Pay Gap will continue to be a long-term challenge and one that’s affected by wider social and cultural factors. We’ve developed a number of actions to take so that we continue to do our part to remove barriers to pay inequality. We recognise that we’re on a journey, with more work to be done.

We’ve also reduced the pay gap for colleagues from ethnic communities year-on-year since we voluntarily decided to assess this along with gender pay reporting – and we’ll continue with our commitment to reduce this further.

We’ve achieved the ‘Social Enterprise Gold Mark’

At the Growth Company we’ve worked hard to cement our position as a leading social enterprise and back in 2021 we gained the ‘Social Enterprise Mark’, alongside a nomination at the UK Social Enterprise Awards.

Building on this, in June 2022 we were awarded the ‘Social Enterprise Gold Mark’. This was a fantastic achievement and one which reinforces our reputation and credibility as an organisation which demonstrates best practices across several key business areas that are central to social enterprise excellence. This includes areas such as governance, stakeholder engagement, business ethics, financial transparency and social impact. Our assessment for the Gold Mark award involved submitting a range of evidence that outlined how we met set criteria, including independently-conducted interviews with some of our Board members and responses collated from colleague surveys. 

Achieving the Social Enterprise Mark accreditation isn’t something that can be achieved over night. It took a robust team effort to bring together and share the evidence to achieve the required standard of social enterprise best practice. We underwent due diligence to prove our credentials, assessed against sector-agreed criteria and we’ve proved our commitment to using profits and income to create benefits for our society and the environment.

We’re accelerating our Neto Zero ambition

The Growth Company is committed to playing its part to mitigate the climate change impacts associated with our operation.

Our business accepts the challenge to mitigate impacts associated with our scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions:

• Scope 1: gas and liquid fuel consumption, refrigerant gases and company vehicle fuel
• Scope 2: purchased electricity
• Scope 3: purchased goods and services, capital goods, up and downstream transportation and distribution, business travel and agile working, employee commuting, leased assets, waste, and investments

We recognise the need to prioritise effort on the impacts associated with the activities under our direct control (scope 1 and 2) swiftly and in line with the Paris Agreement to limit global warming to an upper threshold of 1.5 degrees centigrade. We also appreciate the pressing need to mitigate the impacts associated with our value chain (scope 3).

In 2019 The Growth Company announced its intention to be Carbon Neutral by 2023. In February 2022 we updated our commitment to becoming Net Zero across scopes 1, 2 and 3 by 2035. This new commitment reflects our heightened commitment to reduce our carbon emissions across the organisation and provides a clear pathway for action.

We’re proud to pledge our support for the UN’s Race to Net Zero through Business Declares, a fast-growing network of businesses who acknowledge the Climate and Ecological Emergency. Our aim is to continue to reduce our emissions and impact on biodiversity year-on-year, off-setting the remaining carbon through a recognised carbon off-setting scheme, to the point of becoming Net Zero by 2035.

Concern for both people and the planet are not new to us. We’re an award-winning provider of environmental services, having helped Greater Manchester small-medium enterprises save 2 million tonnes of carbon. In addition, we’ve helped 17,000 unemployed people find work, 8,000 people obtain new skills or qualifications, 11,500 new businesses to start trading, and created 11,000 new jobs (contributing £678m of additional Gross Value Added (GVA) to the UK economy).

We achieved the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System accreditation in 2021. We are also members of the Environmental Association for Universities and Colleges (EAUC) and are an accredited Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) training centre, with our ‘Journey to Net Zero’ programme an accredited IEMA course and soon to be Level 3 certified.

We look forward to continuing to share our journey and ensuring our voice is part of the collective, resounding call for change. We are certainly not claiming to be perfect, neither are we judging others - instead we’re part of a coalition of the willing, looking to collaborate and accelerate action while continuing to highlight the challenges and uncomfortable truths.