Our Ethical Purpose – what the bl**dy hell does it really mean?

Like so many businesses, we’re encouraged to develop a purpose, or mission for us all to hang off and refer back to when we ask ourselves ‘why are we doing this, or doing that’ – What is our purpose and do our business practices and behaviours sit well with it?

Our purpose at Re-Work has been ‘to create inspirational workspaces whilst having a long lasting and positive impact on the environment, society and the local economy’.

Quite a big one if you ask me!!! But we couldn’t really say it any other way. My quick go to way of telling people about our purpose is: ‘People, Planet, Profit’. Which is why we are a Social Enterprise and chose to pin our colours to the mast!

But lately, and more so on the PC (Post-Covid) movement I’ve been wondering what it is that we’re actually doing, I mean, really doing, to fulfil this purpose or mission! I think you’d forgive me for saying that DC (During Covid) we just paid this lip service, I mean could we do anything else…I could argue a case for saying we tried our hardest to look after our ‘People’ in that we made no redundancies or let anyone down, when so many companies were forced to take action.

So I’m now getting back to it, I want to make sure we are working on all the grand ideas I had before all the drama, and now we have this recession stuff looming over us, can we really put the People and Planet before the Profit (in my case I’d go for financial stability & sustainability anyhoo!)

The things highest on my list to work on in 2023 to fulfil our purpose are:

• Reducing our Energy consumption
• Look after our staff through a team enrichment programme
• Reduce our impact via delivery vehicles, and staff transport to and from work.
• Offset our carbon
• Ensure our suppliers are on board through their own business operations
• Re-use & Recycle as much ‘waste’ as we can

The thing is, as a small business, do we really have the time to take on such time-consuming purposes, or is that the point, we need to make time, just a small amount of time, even if we just did one thing… is that good enough? By simply considering the effect your business has on the people and planet around us, changes could be made – we have a responsibility to protect these resources surely?

What is your purpose, or cause? How can we help each other pull this agenda forward – by saving energy, were saving money; by helping people get back into work, we’re putting back into our economy; by re-using furniture (in our case) we’re contributing to the circular economy movement; and what other changes can we make?