RESEARCH, INNOVATION, SUSTAINABILITY AND ENTERPRISE (RISE) WINNERS 2021

Our hard work is paying off! We have won the Research, Innovation, Sustainability and Enterprise (RISE) Awards for the category of Education and Training this year!

Our sustainability journey began in 2016, when Mike and Nafa started considering how we could improve sustainability within PLP. By 2019, we’d made significant progress and felt confident enough to share our plans to the public with the submission of our first poster to the RISE Awards committee at the Leeds Sustainability Institute (a part of Leeds Beckett University). The poster showed our sustainability maturity model, which highlighted intended sustainability initiatives over time. In 2019, we placed ourselves between the initial and managed stages; today we believe we have progressed to the quantitative stage.

In 2020, the initiative was put on hold because of various pandemic-related challenges, such as furlough, securing new business and linked changes to our well-being practices. Fortunately, we have adapted to the “new normal” and rekindled our sustainability initiatives.

Before 2021 applications were due and having reflected on the past year’s goals, we decided that a modified approach to our sustainability development was needed; this took the form of a mixed base approach. Originally, a top-down delivery style was embraced, but it was noticed that there was quite a lot of energy and drive coming from our employees to push on with the sustainability initiatives, so with the support and guidance from a director a Sustainability Work Group (SWG) was set up. The group is responsible for review meetings, tracking current plans and encouraging buy-in from other colleagues. This developmental journey is explained in our 2nd RISE poster submission, which we are delighted to report, was the 2021 winner for the Category of Education and Training section.