At Artic, we prioritise corporate social responsibility and continuously review our company culture to ensure that we’re doing our bit for society. To ensure we impact humanity in a positive way, we refer back to the Government’s Social Value Model.

1. Covid-19 Recovery

The global pandemic has had a devasting impact on all types of businesses and forced unemployment rates to skyrocket. We actively work to aid a fast pandemic recovery by ensuring a Covid-free indoor environment for occupants at our clients’ sites. As lockdown restrictions are incrementally lifted, we support our clients’ return to work by providing reassurance that their site is safe and ready to welcome occupants back. For example, our engineers ensure our clients’ HVAC systems are optimised to prevent airborne transmission. Click here to learn more about how HVAC maintenance can aid infection control.

2. Tackling Economic Inequality

The recruitment, training and retention of staff is one of our top priorities. To tackle economic inequality, our staff are provided the same training opportunities to ensure they continue to develop new skills. Our engineers are all offered opportunities to operate in unique environments and work on new and challenging assets. Not only does this training and development provide them with more confidence, skills and experience, but it also makes the engineers more valuable to us and the entire FM industry. With a greater set of skills, our engineers are more likely to receive promotions, better salaries and benefits in the future.

The Government’s Social Value Model states that developing the skill levels of the current and future workforce is key to creating better, higher-paying jobs in the UK. We share this philosophy and operate a highly successful apprenticeship scheme with the core goal of empowering the future generation of Facilities Managers. For the past ten years, we’ve brought school and college leavers into Artic through this scheme and trained them, providing the skills needed for a career in the industry.

3. Fighting Climate Change

We are passionate about creating a greener future for the coming generations and believe climate change must be addressed on a worldwide level. For this reason, the reduction of carbon emissions is integral to everything we do. To reduce our carbon footprint, we use travel planning apps alongside hybrid and electric fleet vehicles. Additionally, we promote best practice methods of waste reduction and recycling at all times.

To cement our fight against climate change within our company culture, our senior leadership team instils strong awareness throughout all levels of the business and guidance on how employees can support our shared goal. With responsibility for maintaining commercial properties, we have an opportunity to implement environmentally-friendly initiatives and replace carbon-intensive practices. Following stringent testing and inspecting regimes, Artic engineers specialise in increasing the efficiency of assets and reducing their carbon emissions.

Smart technology can reduce the carbon footprint of commercial buildings and we provide guidance to clients looking to make the transition. Smart technology improves the performance of energy-consuming systems within a building, substantially reducing wasted energy and cutting costs. If you’d like to learn more about smart buildings, please read our article.

4. Equal Opportunity

To ensure we provide everyone with an equal opportunity of employment, training and promotion, our equal opportunity policy dictates how we liaise with individuals in all types of workplace scenarios. This policy governs our organisational decisions and how we recruit new staff to ensure we provide equal opportunity to everyone regardless of gender, race, economic background and disability.

5. Improve Health and Wellbeing

We’re strong believers that a happy workforce is a productive workforce, which is why we provide initiatives designed to improve health and wellbeing. We run a variety of quarterly competitions and offer rewards and incentives for our team to enjoy, which we’ve found boosts employee morale.

Our Health Assured scheme allows employees to receive confidential advice and counselling on mental health issues. This service is completely free to our team and ranges from a “kindly person to listen” through to comprehensive counselling programmes. We’ll even refer employees to mainstream NHS services if this would help enhance their wellbeing. It all depends on the individual and the level of support they feel they need.

Summary

Our company culture reflects our overarching commitment to tackle society’s key issues such as post-pandemic recovery, economic inequality and climate change. We provide equal opportunity and support to everyone and continue to tackle economic inequality by training our staff to the highest level, empowering them with the skills needed to receive promotions in the future. As a company, we stand as one in fighting social, economic, and environmental issues and will continue to do so indefinitely.

If you’d like more information on what Artic can do for you, please contact us.