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Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace

16th April 2021 , in Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics, Society, Sustainability, YouTree

Healthy minds are just as important as healthy bodies

April marks Stress Awareness Month and there’s no denying that we’re getting better as a nation at discussing our mental health and wellbeing. However, we’ve still got a long way to go. In fact, according to the Mental Health Foundation, 74% of UK adults have felt so stressed at some point over the last year, they felt overwhelmed or unable to cope. This comes following nearly a year of working from home for many of us – so what will happen when we return to offices and places of work?

The fantastic news is that a new standard, the first of its kind, is currently being finalised to giving practical guidance on managing psychological health in the workplace.

What is ISO45003?

The ISO45003 builds upon ISO45001, which is the international standard for health and safety at work introduced in 2018. The ISO45001 was designed to prevent work-related injuries and provide healthier working environments at a more physical level.

However, the new ISO 45003, due to be published later this year, will provide help in identifying the conditions, circumstances and workplace demands that could potentially have a detrimental impact on employees’ psychological health and wellbeing. In fact, the new set of standards defines a psychologically healthy and safe workplace, as one that ‘promotes workers’ psychological wellbeing and actively works to prevent harm to psychological health.’

How can it help my business and my employees?

While of course the main concern and focus is employee health, particularly at a time when how we work is being increasingly viewed through a mental health lens, there are actually numerous benefits for the employer, should they choose to implement ISO45003. Measures they introduce should also benefit any employees working from home and not just those in the workplace.

It is universally acknowledged that happy and healthy staff not only perform better, but they will also help improve the performance of a business overall. Therefore, undertaking an ISO45003 audit when the standards are finalised in the coming months, could be of great importance and benefit to organisations up and down the country if mental health and wellbeing is high on their agendas.

However, to achieve accreditation, line managers do not need to have a degree in psychology. The ISO45003 is more about the preventative measures a company takes to help create a positive environment in which mental health and wellbeing is taken into account. This will ensure psychological issues or pressures such as stress and anxiety, do not arise in the first place.

The standards should also help reduce the stigma that still envelops the world of mental health; it’s time to break down those barriers and organisations who look to implement ISO45003 will do just that.

In fact, firms already undergoing implementation of ISO45001 only need to apply some elements of the new ISO45003 to achieve it. Good mental health, happy and content employees and teams who feel valued are all parts of the wider sustainability picture and one that all employers should aspire to.

What courses are available to help us now?

YouTree provides interactive e-learning packages, with targeted content for businesses wishing to improve sustainability and mental health and wellbeing in the workplace. YouTree particularly suits organisations who wish to build resilience and engage their staff in greater awareness of sustainability issues. It provides busy HSEQ/Sustainability/HR Managers with a cost-effective tool to support workforce resilience whilst empowering staff to create positive change through making choices and taking sustainability actions.

For more information about how YouTree can help your business, please learn more about the power of sustainability from our founder, Philippa Stanley.

If you would like to learn more about the professional and personal coaching package on offer, get in touch today and book your no obligation, 15-minute coffee and connect session!

How to become an EMS Leader

5th March 2021 , in Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics, Society, Sustainability, Uncategorised, YouTree

Growing into a successful EMS Leader

Do you have the passion to inspire and guide your organisation to take better responsibility for its environmental impact? Growing into an EMS leader doesn’t have to be daunting – it should be full of excitement and possibilities for both you and your team.

What qualities does a good EMS leader have?

Being a leader is to be willing to bring the best out in others. Therefore, being an EMS leader means you will be able to inspire, motivate and empower those around you. To achieve this, you will need to:

Develop relationships

Building trust within your team and creating a safe space for people to share ideas and provide feedback is essential. Your projects will have a higher chance of success if your team both enjoy and want to work with you. Allowing them the opportunity to contribute their ideas, without fear, will enhance your relationship and therefore the success of any projects you implement.

Have a vision

Having a vision for the future is the best way to lead your team to success. Your team will want to know where they are headed and as you develop your relationships, the team will be motivated to reach that goal and follow your lead.

Make decisions

Effective EMS leaders must have solid decision making skills. However, being able to come to decisions in a timely manner does not always mean you have to make the right decisions. In some cases, making an incorrect choice based on the data available is better than making a right decision that took a lot of unnecessary energy. After all, if you make an incorrect decision quickly, the sooner it can be rectified and you will most likely earn respect for your judgement call.

Be humble

As a leader, you are only as good as your team. Therefore, when you are successful, it is down to teamwork and not necessarily down to any individual. You also need to be able to listen to feedback and accept responsibility for failures rather than putting the blame onto others. Remember, people leave managers, not teams and so if you are going to retain talent, you need to create an environment where people feel valued and recognised.

How we can help you

While making the move from EMS manager to leader will feel out of your comfort zone, it is also a great opportunity and one that YouTree can help with.

Our course is the only UK & International course providing a practical guide with 1:1 support for EMS professionals.

Designed specifically for environmental & Q/HSE managers or advisors holding operational responsibility for maintaining and advancing the business’s EMS certification, the course is designed to challenge you to be the very best EMS leader you can be. Find out more here https://www.youtree.uk/ems-leadership-challenge/

You will be coached, provided with peer feedback and challenged to undertake a leadership influencing project within your own organisation.

What you’ll take away:

An understanding of what ‘leadership’ means in the context of ISO 14001:2015
An overview of what it takes to move to a higher level of EMS management/leadership
An understanding of key internal stakeholders and how best to engage their support
Communication tools to help you inspire, motivate and empower others
Useful techniques to engage your colleagues and senior management in a shared vision
A practical Action Plan that develops an EMS leadership auditable outcome

For more about my professional and personal coaching packages, get in touch today and book your no obligation coffee and connect session: hello@youtree.uk

Learn to Love Yourself ♥ HSEQ Manager? – This includes you too!

19th February 2021 , in Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics, Society, Sustainability, Uncategorised, YouTree

The Importance of Self Care for the HSEQ Manager ♥

Health and safety is your life. Not only are you responsible for the development and assessment of comprehensive health and safety management plans, you are also ready at a moment’s notice to react to any situation or emergency. You are constantly on the go: planning, preparing or managing situations.

However, the irony is, you are far more likely to neglect your own needs, in order to achieve your professional goals and targets. Therefore, looking after yourself is paramount to ensuring you continue to meet the demands of such a rigorous role. The importance of self care for the HSEQ manager should never be taken for granted.

I have been where you are and have felt the effects of taking my work home with me, not listening to my body or putting the demands of my work first. While sometimes it cannot be avoided, because emergencies do arise, practising regular self care routines can better prepare you for the stressful situations you will encounter and keep you grounded. So what can you do to look after mental and physical health both in and out of the work environment?

Reconnect with nature

Nature can heal, soothe and restore our physical and mental wellbeing. Exposure to the outdoors has a powerful effect on the way we function as human beings and shouldn’t be taken for granted. Being in nature or simply viewing nature, can ease stress, reduce anxiety, heighten positive emotions as well as helping us think more clearly.

Go for lunchtime walks or runs
Have a bird feeder outside your window to encourage nature to come to you
Have plants in your office
Take business calls outside where possible
Eat lunch outside

Don’t be a slave to your phone

In an age when we can see our work emails on our phones, ask yourself if you ever truly switch off from work? Are you always available? Do people call you after hours when you should be spending time with your family? If the answer is yes, it’s likely to be because you’ve responded to emails at that time before. If people know you are going to reply, they are going to email you at all hours.

Being able to switch off from work doesn’t mean you can’t think about it though; it simply means you create a safe space where work won’t interrupt you unnecessarily. It means you can devote more time to yourself, what you enjoy and those you love.

Set up the ‘do not disturb’ function on your phone
Only allow your phone to receive calls from emergency numbers after certain times
Don’t respond to emails after a certain time; this will lead to a reduction in the amount of emails you actually receive after work hours

Stay hydrated

Drinking plenty of water has both a mental and physical benefit which in turn, can boost our performance at work and our quality of life.

Drinking enough water will:

Prevent fatigue and confusion
Rid your body of toxins
Decrease your susceptibility to depression
Improve the look and feel of your skin and joints
Boost your mood
Improve memory
Help reduce sugar cravings
Increase blood flow around the body

Adopt a good morning and night-time routine to aid sleep

Setting yourself up for a good night’s sleep can actually start the moment you wake up. Feeling like you’re off to a good start for the day can make us more efficient at work, which leads to positive feelings of productivity and in turn, produce those all important ‘feel good’ chemicals in our brains.

A morning routine can involve anything such as getting up and preparing the kids for school, going for a dog walk, doing a pilates session or simply answering the emails you ignored the night before.

Then when you get home from work, you might read a book, cook, exercise or help the children with their homework. Whatever you do, adopting a regular pre and post work schedule will help your mind and body relax and in turn, help you sleep more soundly.

As a certified energy leadership life and executive business coach, I offer personal one-to-one coaching to share the power of energetic connection. I help people thrive by finding a deeper connection to the natural environment which in turn helps them deliver more and stress less.

For more about my professional and personal coaching packages, get in touch today and book your no obligation, 20-minute discovery session: hello@youtree.uk

Why sustainable procurement should be at the top of your sustainability strategy

11th February 2021 , in Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Ethics, Society, Sustainability, Uncategorised, YouTree

Why sustainable procurement should be at the top of your sustainability strategy

Procurement is perhaps one of the most important areas any business should consider if it wants to positively impact change on a wider level. Sustainability is a broad term that means different things to different people. However, at its core, sustainability is about driving positive changes in both our immediate and wider environments that is much more than just climate change and carbon emissions. So, here’s why sustainable procurement should be at the top of your sustainability strategy.

What is sustainable procurement?

Sustainable procurement means ensuring your business only purchases products and services that have the lowest environmental impact and the most positive social results.

Of course, doing good has an ability to make a business look good too, so while changes to procurement processes can appear costly to implement, they can also yield great returns.

Every single business has a procurement process that it could make more sustainable if it chose to. This is because every business has a supply chain, whether sourcing products from suppliers or outsourcing elements of work to contractors and subcontractors. Regardless of whether you have one or 100 suppliers or contractors, your supply chain is likely to be the largest source of your environmental and social impact.

Where to start

If you are just starting out on your sustainability journey, or looking to make further improvements, here are some considerations you can make today.

Establish KPIs

The right KPIs allow you to deliver measurable, tangible sustainability results, where and when they matter. After all, if you don’t have data, you can’t measure and improve performance.

Areas you could look to measure and improve are:

Orders – the number of orders, orders made late/on time and the time between identifying the need for an order and when orders were placed.
Transportation – average distance for supply orders or number of unnecessary supplier journeys through lack of planning.
Shipment receipt – number of deliveries, number of deliveries arriving later than required or quantity of damaged deliveries leading to collection and additional orders.
Utilities – water consumption, energy consumption, electric consumption or use of recycled energy.
The type and amount of packaging. Is it made from recycled material and how much plastic are you using. Is your packaging reusable or readily recyclable?
Suppliers – number of suppliers, share of suppliers with ISO14001 certification, number of onsite accidents at supplier locations.

Thinking about these types of KPIs can help businesses turn their ambition of more sustainable procurement into practical actions and therefore, into results.

Segment your suppliers

Make a list of all your suppliers, contractors and subcontractors and order them accordingly in terms of their potential impact on your sustainability performance.

Start with those who can contribute positively to your efforts. Take into account their practices around sustainability issues such as:

Waste minimisation – identifying and limiting sources of waste, promoting recycling or aftermarket and avoiding landfill, enabling circular economy.
Plastic avoidance – materials evaluation considering total environmental burden, sourcing portfolio redesign for minimum total impact.

Supply chain transparency – eradication of child labour and modern slavery and auditing their own suppliers’ labour practices.

Plan for the long term

Evaluate what is necessary and essential to your business over the long term. Sustainability itself needs to be sustainable and therefore isn’t a short-term fix.

With regards to sustainable procurement, look at what is required for your business processes to run as efficiently as possible and the equipment needed to deliver your product or service:

Do you need it? Is it a must have or essential to business?
Research technology – are there better products and equipment you can use to reduce such as 3D printing?
Can you buy in bulk to reduce the number of orders required? If you are a small business, can you unite with another, similar business to help reduce waste?
What products can be refillable?
Can you collaborate with another business to either use their waste product or offer them yours? After all, one business’s waste is another’s raw material.

For more ideas around how to improve your sustainable procurement for your business, get in touch with YouTree today.

We can help your business impact environmental and social changes on both your immediate and wider environments. Our tailored packages can help change employee mindset, empowering them to drive change in both the workplace and at home.

Having worked in target-driven environments ourselves means we can help find ways for your business to increase value and reduce cost.

To book a no obligation, 20-minute discovery session, email hello@youtree.uk

The Circular Economy – a paradigm too far?

31st October 2019 , in Business, Corporate Social Responsibility, Sustainability

We live in a ‘boom-bust’ economy where the so called health of a country’s economy is judged using Gross Domestic Product (GDP) based upon the total value of goods and services produced over a specific time frame.

Linked to global markets and at the mercy of the next world economy wanting to develop infrastructure and create commercial growth as far as the money lasts, we gear up to meet demand, and then fall into recession when the bubble bursts, creating hardship and casualties for those caught in the fallout.

These boom-bust cycles create a linear sine wave and we have continued along this road since the industrial revolution. Our increasing consumerism with the nano- second product life of fashion and trends, plus the built in obsolescence of electrical and other goods, provides a short term GDP focus on end markets.

All too soon products become discarded, creating an increasing waste stream paid for again, by the end user through taxation. As consumers, we are trapped onto the treadmill of buying the latest trend, only to pay for its disposal sooner rather than later.

“If we continue to do what we’ve always done, we’ll continue to get what we’ve always had”

Arguably, the environmental impact of the boom- bust scenario means that the environment fares better when we are in recession mode. Having to be increasingly creative with less means we become more imaginative and inventive. We also use less resources and utilities, and therefore create less waste for disposal.

So how do we break away from this feast or famine circus?

What if there was an alternative to being lured into buying something, only to find that all too soon it’s no longer fit for purpose, and we have to pay again to dispose of it?

There is a revolution afoot, for a ‘circular economy’ where effort is concentrated on maintaining the resources and energy within the lifecycle of the products created. Instead of developing and selling products that are not designed for repair, manufacturers design and build-in product longevity whilst considering the product life cycle, from cradle to grave. This challenges the boom-bust scenario.

By designing products that are of a robust quality, are able to be repaired, modified and upgraded to remain fit for our changing purpose during use, the components can then be re-manufactured back into the process, and the shelf life becomes infinity.

Great! But the really neat thing is that some of these pioneer companies are considering hiring the use of their products as a service instead of an item. The manufacturer no longer designs products for sale to the consumer, instead they sell the use of that item, taking responsibility for its lifetime.

What if we no longer purchased, used, outgrew and disposed of goods, but instead bought into the use of a home laundry service, or a supply of bikes for our children that grew with them?

This may sound far-fetched, yet companies like Isla Bikes have started to introduce such schemes, and a British Standard BS8001 has just been launched providing guidance to organisations around how to apply holistic thinking to product design.

With the economic benefit of the circular economy being estimated at €18 trillion in Europe and the creation of 200,000 new jobs in the UK by 2030*, the opportunity for decoupling our ties with linear resource use and the associated environmental impacts of such are immense.

Breaking out of the boom-bust will not be an easy option, but what an opportunity to challenge the current paradigm and introduce a new circular era.

*World Economic Forum 2017 Register of Global Risks of Highest Concern for Doing Business.

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