As a growing organisation, our vision for the future is to be both an employer of choice and partner of choice to our customers and suppliers. We understand that having a strong purpose in People and Planet helps to reinforce and grow our other strategic pillars of Customer and Performance.
By working with purpose, we hope to create the desire for our associates, our customers, and suppliers to choose to work with us daily, building a sustainable business and providing security for our families and our community.
People
We aim to attract, develop and retain talent and to ensure that our culture promotes high levels of associate engagement, inclusion, and wellbeing. To enable our associates to adapt, dare and learn, we promote fair and individual career development and ensure that the right people are assigned to the right role providing excellence in what they do.
We understand that our success as an organisation is closely tied to associate engagement, trust, growth, development, and teamwork, and we work to assess, measure, and support the personal and professional growth of our associates.
We expect our associates to act according to our values, to the highest standards of honesty and integrity, as well as complying with all internal codes of practise and policies along with legal and regulatory requirements.
We will always ensure that we do not risk the physical or mental health and safety of our associates ensuring high standards of health and safety at work and demonstrating proper personal concern for the wellbeing of our associates.
To demonstrate our ongoing commitment to towards improving mental health in the workplace, we are affiliated gold members of the Mental Health Charter. We provide training for Mental Health First Aiders and Champions around the business, encouraging an environment that engages and embraces the mental health agenda, and making best practices and information readily and wherever possible freely available.
Diversity & Inclusion
We are committed to embedding diversity and inclusion across the whole organisation. We recognise and celebrate the value that a diverse workforce brings, and we are fully committed to the elimination of any unlawful and unfair discrimination.
We aspire to have a diverse and inclusive workforce because we understand that this moral imperative drives better outcomes for both our associates and our business.
We also believe that a more inclusive workplace, where people of diverse backgrounds, cultures and perspectives work together and support each other will enrich and create a better environment for everyone.
We aim to place inclusion at the heart of all we do.
We have a membership with ‘Inclusive Employers’ This prioritises our understanding of the unique inclusion and diversity challenges within our organisation providing tailored, action-focused support from established leaders in the field.
Our D&I policy is reviewed annually to ensure that we benchmark against best practise and advisory resources from Inclusive Employers.
To help foster an inclusive workplace, we provide ongoing diversity and inclusion training to all employees, not just our management teams.
We understand that diversity and inclusion are not a one-time effort or training session, it is a commitment to continual learning, improvement, and action to do our part in ensuring that diversity and inclusion is an everyday reality.
Our open voices survey is completed every two years where we gain internal feedback from our associates on their thoughts and feelings on D&I through several defined questions. Our D&I Index is detailed in the appendix.
Planet
We recognize the importance of protecting the environment and actively working towards putting environmental sensitivity at the forefront of our business decisions and operations.
We are fully committed to placing the planet at the core of our business activities and strive daily to reduce our carbon emissions to support the Sonepar Group’s aim to become carbon neutral by 2040.
To do this, we recognise that we not only need to ensure that we reduce our use of energy, but also work towards a circular economy and embed the importance of this within our culture.
Alongside Sonepars’ global Sustainability Leadership Committee, our UK Sustainability Leader and Ambassadors ensure we know and understand our footprint allowing us to plan how to reduce this efficiently and adapt to any changes through initiatives such as LED lighting, Energy Management Systems, Electric Cars, EV Charging and reducing travel with a hybrid working policy.
We ensure we remove waste metal, wood, chipboard and WEEE waste appropriately and operate recycling schemes through our offices. We consistently look at ways in which we can ensure the waste we create is minimized and looking to the future we want to ensure our products are circular through reducing, reusing, repairing, and recycling.
We plant a tree in the name of every new associate, to embed the culture from the outset. All our new associates are also trained within their induction on our footprint and how they can help, as well as yearly refresher training for all associates as well as monthly communication on our goals.
Community
We support community investments and educational programs, and our volunteering and philanthropy are driven through the People Operations team.
To promote a culture of responsibility and giving across our company, we encourage our associates to participate in charity events where we offer corporate contributions to individual and group fundraising activities.
Our volunteering policy enables our associates to use a day a year to volunteer for a cause that is close to their heart. In addition, we organise corporate volunteer events during the year.
We donate annually to the community foundation with our level of donation enabling a named corporate fund. This is reviewed annually with 2021 -22 being dedicated to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion focussing specifically on ethnic minority communities around social mobility among young people and the development of professional careers.
We offer Charitable Giving via Payroll Giving. Payroll Giving Quality Mark awards are graded based on % of our associates giving from our total headcount. We are presented with our award status annually.
We continue to strive to support community causes with both time and funding per annum.
Our non-financial maturity assessment
Our purpose statement and metrics enable us to communicate our purpose, the outcomes, and the value this brings to our associates, customers, suppliers, and our community.
To ensure consistency and accountability of our purpose statements, we need metrics and indicators to ensure that both the good and the bad outcomes are tracked, assessed, and communicated both internally and externally.
Our metrics are reviewed quarterly at the board meeting where the data highlights opportunities to accelerate positive impact and mitigate negative impact and guides future decisions around where to allocate and invest in resources.
Our Purpose maturity assessment is new for 2022 and will be tracked annually and shared with our associates and here on our website to provide open and transparent updates on our non-financial measures.