Our Purpose and Our How We Measure It

Our Purpose:

Our mission at Fit For Purpose is to accelerate the behaviours in business that lead directly to greater positive social and environmental impact.

We achieve this primarily through helping our clients lead and succeed through embedding purpose, and by creating positive social and environmental impact within their businesses.

However, we also want to build a positive impact business of our own – so that the environment and society is better off as a result of our existence. We do this in two ways:-

  • Firstly, we do all we can to reduce our negative impacts and help contribute to the society in which we operate.
  • Secondly, we use our voice to campaign for the changes we want to see in business and society to help us live within planetary boundaries and tackle inequalities.

Customer Impact

Our goal is for every project we undertake, is to work with our customers to create a measurable positive social environmental or economic impact through their business activities, or to help them reduce their negative impacts

Targets and FY21 Progress:

  • Be able to trace measurable impact directly back to operational or transformational improvements.
    At least one strategic recommendation     we make during the course of the project, involves a significant operational improvement and/or evidence of long term positive social or environmental changes to the client’s business. Goal 80%:

    FY21: Achieved for 80% of clients.

     

    • e.g. Adoption more ambitious/impactful sustainability targets or goals; improvement in the corporate governance of ESG in terms of transparency, board-level ownership of key ESG issues and KPIs; or change or improvement in the way environmental, social impacts are being managed, measured or reported on.
  • Achieve an average score of 4+/5 in the “impact question” on our client questionnaire. FY21 Score: 4.5

Our Impact

We do all we can to reduce our negative impacts and help contribute to the society in which we operate. There are three key pillars within our own impact strategy which we focus on:
  • Diversity & Inclusion
  • Environmental Impact
  • Community Impact
  • We use our voice to campaign for the changes we want to see

Diversity & Inclusion

Our goal at Fit For Purpose is to be reflective of the society in which we operate, both in terms of our attitude and approach and eventually in terms of our workforce. We also support female or minority owned businesses in our supply chain by prioritising those businesses when appointing suppliers

Since we are still relatively small, we believe the greatest impact we can have is through transfer of skills and training for young or career change professionals from diverse backgrounds who are trying to break into or advance within the sustainability sector. We can also have an influence over our clients to ensure they prioritise D&I in their goals and programmes.

Targets and Progress in FY21:

  • We joined the IEMA Diverse Sustainability Initiative in March 2021 and as part of this we plan to offer at least one mentorship to a young professional who identifies as being from a minority group for up to 2 days of time per year)
  • We aim to have 30% of our discretionary spend on suppliers with female or minority owned businesses.
FY21: Achieved 30%

 
  • Aim for 80% of sub-contractors or freelance contracts to be with either local, female-owned, minority owned or minority/female-owned or led businesses.
FY21: 7/8 subcontractors were women

 
  • Ensure that Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (JEDI) is prioritised in the hierarchy of issues our clients’ sustainability strategies, and has targets and programmes of action
Goal for FY22: 4/5 of our broad holistic sustainability client projects include JEDI programmes or targets

 

Environmental Impact

Our goal is to become a Net Zero business by 2030

Our environmental impact as a business is tiny. However, we believe that every little counts, and that in order to demonstrate that we truly value the environment as an equal stakeholder in our and every other business, it is our duty to try and live within planetary boundaries.

  • Our goal is to exist as a zero-carbon business by 2030 and in 2021 we made the SME Climate Commitment, by joining the SME Climate Hub’s Race to Zero campaign and pledging our commitment to reach Zero Carbon by 2030

Progress in FY21:

  • We use 100% renewable electricity tariff supplied by Octopus Energy, (with no more than 3% hydro power) to power our home office, and have installed 34 solar panels on our roof to help boost our renewable electricity supply and our green gas tariff offsets our gas use through Gold Standard offsets
  • In 2020/21 we installed smart meters in our home office to better monitor energy use and schedule car charging and larger energy usage to lower grid impact times
  • We have now also converted our home (office) to using 100% LED lightbulbs
  • Travel:
    • Our travel policy prioritises train travel over car or air. When we travel by car, we use electric cars and charge them using renewable electricity sources where possible.
    • We offset all our ‘unavoidable’ business travel emissions, including train and tube travel, via nature based solutions Gold Standard offsets
    • Our cars are full EVs (for personal and business use)

Targets going forward:

  • In 2021/22 we plan to replace our gas boiler with air sourced heat pump for home
  • Office heating and hot water supply
  • In 2022/23, we aim to reduce overall annual consumption for home office use by 15% through improving loft insulation

Community Impact

Our goal is to ‘give back’ to our local and national communities and our natural environment through time investment and financial donations. We also support our local community by prioritising 80% of our discretional spend on suppliers with local, independently owned businesses

Healthy community nurture healthy businesses. We see our business as being as integral part of our local community in Oxford, as well as the wider UK business and sustainability community. As a business which is working for positive social and environmental change through business, we make it our business to support our local community as much as we can.

Targets and Progress:

  • We will invest 5% of total available employee time in pro bono consultancy services for charities, social enterprises and other non-profit causes annually by 2025
FY21: 115 hours or 3.8% of time was in local charities Global Canopy, Citizens Advice Oxford, national social enterprise Neighbourly.

 
  • We will also invest 3% of our revenues in environmental or social impact charities, with a focus on local charities by 2025
FY21: 2% of revenues donated. Our main beneficiaries were Global Canopy, Citizens Advice Oxford.

 
  • We aim for 80%+ of discretionary supplier spend (spend not dictated by limited competitive supply of services such as telecoms, business insurance etc) to be with local, independently owned businesses.
FY21: 90% of spend with local independent suppliers

 
  • We replace financial or physical gifts and hospitality for clients with investments on their behalf in social or environmental causes.
In FY21 we invested in Trees for Life as Christmas gifts for our clients

 

Our Impact

We use our voice to campaign for the changes we want to see in business and society to help us live within planetary boundaries and tackle inequalities

Targets:

  • We lend our voice to petitions, awareness building campaigns and movements for positive social and environmental change to help amplify those messages both within and outside of our sector. Our aim is to actively participate in up to 5 positive action campaigns each year to support systemic change that will bring out positive social or environmental impact.

Key Progress:

  • In FY21 we supported the following campaigns or joined with pledges for business change:
    • We wrote to our local MP, Layla Moran, to ask her to vote for The Climate and Ecological Emergency Bill which was tabled by Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, and attended a constituency meeting with her to ask for her full support. Ms Moran did vote for the bill which now has support from over 100 MPs from across 8 political parties
    • We became an Official Partner to the Business for Nature Call to Action to ask governments around the world to act to reverse nature loss in this decade
    • We joined the Better Business Act Coalition – a campaign led by B Lab UK which is lobbying to change UK Law and create a new contract between business and society.
    • We also took part in the Youth Climate Summit in 2020 to showcase potential careers in sustainability to school aged children from across the UK
Read more about how we measure our targets

 

How do we measure the impact we are having through our clients?

  • At the start of our project, during our brief taking, proposal writing and planning stage, we ensure we have
    a clear mandate from our clients which determines what their current position and strategy is in relation to
    social, economic or environmental impact, and agree what a successful outcome for that project looks like.
  • On completion of the project, we send all clients involved or the primary client lead a short questionnaire
    to understand how we fared. We measure:
    • Our overall client satisfaction for the project and its outcomes (Goal: 4.5/5)
    • The extent to which the work we did will influence our client to create more positive social,
      economic or environmental impact (Goal: 4.5/5)
    • How likely they are to recommend us to other businesses (Goal: 5/5)
    • Whether the client received valuable insights as a result of the project (Goal 100% Agree)
    • Whether Fit For Purpose represents value for money (Goal: 100% Good or Excellent)
    • What we can learn/do differently as a result of their experience working with Fit for Purpose
  • We follow up with clients, or stay in close contact with them after the completion of the project (between 6
    and 12 months) to find out how our consultancy recommendations have been implemented and/or what operational changes have taken place as a result of the project we ran and keep a record of this.