Meet the Team: Sustainability Special
A passion for the environment runs deep among everyone at Workspace, but perhaps most of all in our sustainability team, who have made it their mission to ensure we’re doing everything we can to help make the world a better place.
Sonal Jain, Ariane Ephraim and Mel Gooding are an all-female team spending their days hammering home the sustainability message with increasingly imaginative initiatives and projects, bringing Workspace customers together with a shared goal.
For the team, opportunities for reducing the carbon footprint of Workspace and improving sustainability in the Workspace journey to net zero are everywhere, it’s just a matter of finding them. The key to this, says Sonal, is in connections: “A starting point is building a deep connection with the customers, so it creates an open channel for communication.”
Mel continues: “Collaboration is important to achieve a positive impact, whether with our customers or the local community. A lot of our insights come from the feedback we get and the surveys we do to get the quantifiable information and we can hone in on the parts that are more important. We did a B Corp supper club and that gave us a real insight into what our customers care about and what they are doing on their own journeys.”
Workspace customers do far more than provide ideas. As Ariane points out, they are a rich pool of fascinating talent and they’re often willing to share it, whether that’s on a sustainability tip or other topics.
“We’ve got a great mix of customers, and it is really interesting to see how our events team works with the customers when building the events programme, for example our puppy therapy sessions are organised with a customer, our pottery workshops and terrarium building are from our pool of customers and it shows the breadth of talent we have within our customer pool.”
It’s something the team relied on for the Big Energy Race, our recent energy saving drive, and also for a new biodiversity initiative. Ariane says: “We’re working on formalising nature and biodiversity targets which is really exciting, and I think there’s lots of potential on the Workspace portfolio and lots of things we can do.”
“We’re actually hunting for good collaboration opportunities with our customers for enhanced impact,” adds Sonal.
A desire to make an impact is fundamental to the sustainability team - to make a difference for good in a polluted world, and they agree it’s what gives them the incentive to come to work every day.
“What we do is very fulfilling and has its own impact every day,” says Sonal.
Mel agrees: “I come to work every day to do our tiny little bit towards reducing our carbon emissions. I couldn’t be in a career that wasn’t meaningful and with the built environment contributing about 40 per cent of all carbon emissions, I think this is a great place to work to help reduce that.”
A measure of success that Ariane can also identify with: “It’s really great work for us as a business to drive the sustainability agenda forward in a way that’s going to make sense for Workspace.”