In recent years, the call from customers to work with suppliers that are actively working towards a positive sustainability impact is becoming louder. And rightly so. It is hard to escape the visible impact consumer choices have throughout the natural world and this doesn’t exclude building materials. In fact, as raw materials, this is exactly where we need to start.

In JP Corry, with education of our people at the forefront of our Sustainability Roadmap, we are developing a sustainability culture within the business. Having committed colleagues engaged in the process of making individual and team contributions towards our target of Net Zero Carbon by 2050 is vital to this. It became apparent that levels of understanding of sustainability issues varied considerably within the business so we focused on education and training as key to ensuring that colleagues are fully equipped to engage with various stakeholders and contribute to carbon footprint reduction plans.   


 
We decided to engage with the Supply Chain Sustainability School to assist this and utilised some of the multitudes of information available which has become a huge help with upskilling and training colleagues on important sustainability issues. We pushed the School out to all managers across the business, with 23 across all departments using the facility. With administrators in place to lead, the School has now been embedded in our learning programme. Our staff have attended various training events hosted by the School to understand particular topics better. We have also found it helpful that users can choose between resources that provide quick overviews of topics and ones which go into greater detail. This is very helpful in allowing users to gain an overarching understanding of topics without requiring much prior knowledge.
 
The School has given our staff the ability to access a wealth of information across various topics and resources, thus improving their skills and understanding. This will be a great benefit when staff discuss with customers how they can help them on their particular pathway. This will not only reassure our customers that JP Corry know what they are talking about, but also allows us to differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

Our goal is to ensure that our staff feel equipped to discuss sustainability with our stakeholders and to give our customers the confidence that they can support them on their journey and provide solutions that benefit them and the wider society.