Generational growth

Businesses can get so focused on their growth strategies and ‘business as usual’ activities, that it can be easy to forget about the bigger picture – the world in which your business exists within, and grows into. If you strip everything away and take a long hard look at what impact your business has had on the world, the hope is that we have collectively as a team helped drive positive change in some form or another, otherwise … what’s the point?

A few years ago, as Tilt started to grow at pace, we decided to do so in environmentally and socially sustainable ways. Championed by our Office Manager, Melanie, we have collectively gone above and beyond to ensure that we are doing our bit. Building it into our culture from the ground up.

Here are just a few of the things that we have done so far:

Property: We brought office space in a new development called One Brighton, a project designed from the ground up with sustainability in mind.

Recycling: Working with Paper Round, we actively try to recycle as much as possible … and have won an award for our efforts. Last year alone we recycled 2,260 kg.

Composting: Paper Round challenged us to improve this so we did. We are lucky enough to have access to a compost bin.

Milk & coffee: We switched to Milk&More to reuse bottles, and to Brighton’s excellent Red Roaster coffee, who directly help the farmers in Rwanda, who supply the company’s coffee beans, their families and the people involved in helping them become self-sufficient. The coffee is also delivered to us by bike, and will soon come in reusable packaging.

Bin change: We changed our big office bin for one which is 70% smaller, as a visual reminder that it is only for items that can’t be recycled, which has worked really well.

Pro bono: We have a long-standing relationship with Fareshare Sussex, where we design and manage their online presence, ultimately helping them to reduce food waste and help those in need.

Repair, don’t replace: We hooked up with an official repair company for our office equipment, so we shouldn’t have to replace them in future for a long, long, long time.

Cleaning products: We challenged our cleaners (Maid in Brighton) to change all of their products to those awarded with the Green Apple award.

Loo roll: We changed to the wonderful Who Gives a Crap sustainable toilet paper, who donates 50% of its profits to help build toilets for the 2.3 billion people who don’t have one.

Printing: We renamed our printer ‘Use me sparingly :)’. It’s a small thing but one that has made a big behavioural change at the point of use.

Learning lunch: A nutritionist gave us a talk, highlighting the need to prevent food waste.

Flights policy: We have committed to carbon offset any business flights.

Reverse Advent Calendar: Each year we participate in a reverse advent calendar for Fareshare Sussex. Each day Tilt team members bring in an item of non-perishable foodstuff and pop it in a box under the tree. Then, just before Christmas, Fareshare collects and distributes the boxes to their local network of more than 100 local charities and organisations.

And finally … a new way of measuring success
Finally, new to 2020, we are saying hello to a new way of measuring business success.

Our whole ethos and approach to solving client challenges are how can we make a positive impact. We wanted this to be true when speaking about the overall success of the business. So, rather than speaking about business success in terms of profit vs turnover, we will now also measure our success by the number of trees we have planted each fiscal year.

A tree is planted when a successful project is delivered. The measure of success for a project is based on profitability and also impact. If the teams deliver projects that are on budget and surpass client expectations through the impact it achieves, then it’s a tick in the box for ‘team tree’.