Sustainability at InnovateHer

Written by: Lauren on September 6, 2023

Our commitment to becoming a more sustainable organisation.

In June 2023, we embarked on a campaign with the Digital PR Agency Don’t Be Shy. Our mission? To uncover the true connection between Gender Equality and Sustainability.

Gender equality is too often overlooked as ‘women’s work’ or ‘just an HR issue’. Few businesses understand that it has anything to do with resilience and corporate sustainability, and the report we created aimed to not only highlight this but also to end this cycle.

The report also allowed us at InnovateHer to question what we do for sustainability: Do we do enough? How can we be better? What would this look like for our social enterprise?

Where are we now?

InnovateHer is a digital-first business.

As a result of the change in working patterns through the COVID-19 pandemic, like many businesses, we moved to remote working whilst we were unable to meet in person.

However, as pandemic-related restrictions lifted, we recognised the benefit that remote working had on the well-being of our colleagues, (plus the effect on the environment due to the reduced need to commute!). As a result of this, we made the decision to become a digital-first business permanently.

Some of the ways we have done this include:

• Retaining office space for our quarterly in-person meetings or when colleagues need to meet in person – we now have a shared office space with other local businesses, reducing our energy consumption and ensuring that we minimise waste.

• If the team need to attend an in-person meeting, public transport is strongly encouraged.

• We have also made a conscious decision to be a paperless company, using digital signing tools and publishing all reports digitally.

It’s safe to say that all InnovateHer team members are passionate about making the world a better place. Here’s where we mapped out what we could do to contribute…

Where do we want to be?

At InnovateHer, we are fully aware that sustainability as a remote organisation looks different. We need to acknowledge that everything we do is spread out over the UK and, therefore, has a wider impact. We want to be honest about where the impact actually sits and not do things for the sake of a corporate tick-box exercise.

With all of this in mind, we have created a pledge that sets clear, long-term targets for our people, planet, students and our partners. We have the opportunity to help embed sustainable decision making, but in order to achieve this, we must first embed sustainability across our organisation.

See below for a breakdown of how we plan to achieve this in our first year:

People:

• We will explore how we can reduce our digital carbon footprint as a remote organisation.

• We commit to embedding continuous learning into our work-life, supporting us to build our sustainability strategy.

• We will appoint sustainability champions to hold us to account and ensure we are embedding our learning into our delivery.

Planet:

• We will focus on using local suppliers and shopping responsibly, focusing on cruelty-free and ethical organisations.

• We will reduce our use of non-recyclable items where we can.

Students:

• We will integrate ideas on sustainable technologies and climate role models into InnovateHer Online content, sharing our knowledge and inspiring the next generation to consider sustainable practices.

Partners:

• We will review who we bank with, making the switch to green banking and moving away from organisations perpetuating the climate crisis.

Our pledge for our first year is one of learning and creating foundations for our organisation to develop.

Through our community of partners, ambassadors, schools and students, we have the opportunity to influence sustainable decision-making across a wider community. But this journey starts internally by embedding our goals into everything we do.

What are you doing in your business to make the world a better place?

Please tell us via partners@innovateher.co.uk!

Read the report that kick-started all this thinking.

We want to work with forward-thinking ethical partners. If you are interested in partnering with us, please get in touch via partners@innovateher.co.uk.

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