Employee Race to Zero

Recently, the team at RSC Training took part in the Employee Race to Zero Competition, a global, UN endorsed sustainability initiative designed to raise awareness of the way employees can drive climate action within their companies.

The competition, run by Giki, took place online over two weeks from 14-27 October 2024, with the first weeks theme being "Go Green At Work" and the second weeks theme being "The Big Switch". The idea over the two weeks was to encourage employees to take "steps" to reduce their carbon footprint.
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Why Did We Get Involved?

As a company, RSC Training are always looking at ways to improve our processes with our commitment to sustainability, reducing our carbon footprint and to generally try and be as green as we can be, when we heard about the Employee Race to Zero competition, it seemed like a good opportunity to gauge where we were at, gain ideas and see what more we could do.

RSC Training's Director Richard commented: "We hadn't actually heard of the Employee Race to Zero Competition or of Giki until it came up on a newsletter from the Ladder Association saying they were taking part and were encouraging their members to do the same. As we were already doing some other work on sustainability for another project at the time, we looked into it and decided it would fit in well with what we were doing and to get involved"
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So What Did We Do?

The idea of the competition was to take "steps", suggested by Giki, to reduce carbon footprint. When we first started looking into taking "steps", we found that a lot of what was being suggested were things that we were already doing! It was a good realisation and recognition of the work we already do towards sustainability. There were however "steps" we could take and it gave us a good opportunity to implement some ideas we had but just hadn't got around to doing.

Two good examples of this were:

Implementing Recycling and Waste Management at our Training Centre, replacing the single black bin with a range of recycling bins and a food waste bin, to encourage those attending our facilities to better think about separation of their waste.

Reducing Postage, by looking at ways in which we can minimise if not avoid postage needs, such as only sending paperwork to Instructors as needed, encouraging them to send paperwork to us in batches rather than per course and handing training cards/certificates to delegates who are coming to us repeatedly.

New Recycling and Food Waste systems implemented at our Thamesmead Training Centre

Delegate Ellen receiving her LadderCard from Instructor Richard whilst attending her PASMA Combined course

So How Did We Do?

As a team, there were only three of us taking part, but as the competition was designed as such that it didn't take up too much time around normal working procedures, we were all able to contribute to RSC Training's overall result. 

As it turns out, despite of some of the other companies taking part having much larger teams involved, RSC Training managed to perform well and achieved 4th place on the overall leader board, narrowly missing out on 3rd place and a prize by only one "step".

As the point of the competition was not about winning prizes but to improve on sustainability, the overall result ultimately doesn't matter as long as everyone learns something and makes positive changes within their companies.

Final statistics for RSC Training for the Employee Race to Zero Competition

Richard commented: "Although maybe slightly frustrating that we missed out on the podium by only one "step", it was a good exercise for us to go through as a company to see where we are at with regards to sustainability. Credit to Lyndsey and Karen for their contributions which were much better than mine, I came bottom of the office leader board!"

Where Do We Go From Here?

After the event had finished, the team at RSC Training took time out to catch up with Sorrel Humphrey, Sustainability Advisor for the Ladder Association, so we could compare notes on how we each felt the competition had gone and what comes next.

We learnt from Sorrel that the Ladder Association finished 12th in the overall leader board, that they had also seen that they were already doing a lot of good things already and that the process had been a positive one to be involved with for them too.

Going forward, RSC Training will be continuing with its ongoing commitment towards sustainability, implementing new processes where applicable and will be supporting the Ladder Association in their future endeavours in regards to sustainability.