Episode show notes
“How do you make sure that sustainability is not a compliance play, it’s not a nice-to-do and a tick box? Put it right in your business strategy.”
From Simon King’s eventful early career, to his hugely influential endeavours in the sustainability world now, he’s amassed experiences to inspire us all to embrace the green agenda.
Whether it’s making the huge leap in efficiency through electric vehicle use, or promoting sustainability throughout your supply chain, this week’s episode of Talent Talks has tips for us all to make that essential change.
Find out why it’s more important to roughly understand your impact than spend time on the minutia, how ‘Do, Lead, Deliver’ drives Mitie’s approach, and more in this 2nd part of a fascinating conversation with Simon.
This episode of Talent Talks covers:
- The key differences between sustainability & ESG
- How a sustainable links into attracting talent
- Mitie’s ‘Do, Lead, Deliver’ approach to sustainability
- Promoting a green approach through to suppliers
- How EVs can massively improve a fleet’s end-to-end efficiency
This episode of Talent Talks is sponsored by Nutral. Through their neutral vendor managed service, Nutral offers an easier, streamlined way to achieve better fulfilment, improved quality, 100% visibility & control of expenditure, less risk, and bottom-line savings. They place the interests of customers first when selecting suppliers – every time. Find out more at https://nutral.uk/
Episode highlights
“I wasn’t an FM expert. I’m still not. But I had done three different procurement transformations, and Mitie was looking for someone to do procurement transformation. When I went through the interview process, a big part of my pitch was almost, ‘If you get someone who’s always been in the space, you’ll get what you’ve always got.’” – 3:35 – Simon King
“If you go out and buy a Tesla Powerwall with about 15kWh of storage, it costs you about £7k. The car that I was driving at that point had a 65kWh battery, which is effectively five Tesla Powerwalls, so about £35k worth of battery, and the car costs £36k. So it’s basically buy a battery, get a car for free.” – 6:40 – Simon King
“The approach that we proposed and delivered with Plan Zero was one of Do, Lead, Deliver. So do it ourselves, lead the industry, and deliver for clients. This was no green washing, we were living it, doing it, and making it happen.” – 14:50 – Simon King
“Do the equivalent of your spending analysis, understand where your emissions are, where your waste is and where that’s coming from, but also don’t get too hung up on the exact details. One of the phrases I use all the time is that it’s better to be roughly right than precisely wrong.” – 18:20 – Simon King
“How do you make sure that sustainability is not a compliance play, it’s not a nice-to-do and a tick box? Put it right in your business strategy.” – 23:00 – Simon King
“The sustainability piece all dovetails into procurement and bottom line savings. They’re not separate siloed pieces, it’s all part of it, and it’s part of that employee engagement.” – 26:55 – Martin Smith
“If I said, ‘I’ve got this great solution, it’s got 40% asset utilisation, and each asset when used is just under 15% energy efficient, you’d kick me out your office and say, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about’. I can’t promise that we’ll sort your asset utilisation out by switching to electric, but at least they’re 72% efficient end-to-end. So it’s not a surprise that they save you money because you’re going from 15% efficiency to 72% efficiency, which is huge.” – 27:40 – Simon King
“You can be a business with a very good ESG rating and operate in a way which is hugely detrimental to the planet and to people. That is the thing that people don’t seem to get.” – 36:45 – Simon King
“On average, 70% of a company’s revenue is spent with their supply chain. At least that much, if not more, of their impact from a sustainability point of view and from emissions sits in their supply chain.” – 38:45 – Simon King
Links & References
- Simon King, MD and Sustainability & ESG Senior Leader
https://www.linkedin.com/in/simon-king-45284533/
- Martin Smith, Founder & Director of Talent Drive
https://www.linkedin.com/in/martinsmith2009/
