Environmental

The climate crisis is the defining topic of our age. At Mackie Myers, we care about our carbon footprint and we passionately believe in the role of business to contribute to a more sustainable future. Through our day to day activities, we seek to highlight the net zero agenda across our network, and focus on driving tangible green actions within our control as we strive towards a greener future. Together, we can make a positive impact and create a greener, cleaner world for generations to come. Our green actions include:

•    Commuting – we embrace eco-friendly commuting with our team making their way to the office via public transport, cycling or walking. This is also the case for travel to meetings, avoiding taxis unless absolutely necessary.

•    Tree Planting – for every placement that we make, we plant trees in forests around the world with More Trees. Our customers love their tree e-certificates and is our small gesture to contribute towards sustainable regeneration of ecosystems and increased carbon capture. You can see our virtual forest here. 

•    4 Day Week – after our first year of trading, we trialled and then permanently embraced a four day working week for all staff. Numerous studies have demonstrated that one of the many benefits includes reduced consumption and environmental impact from employees. 

•    Coffee Cups – conscious of the waste created by single use coffee cups, every employee receives their own reusable coffee cup on day one so they never have to use a disposable one ever again.

•    Paperless Office – we know that the global pulp and paper industry is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. We embrace digital technology to support all areas of our operations, encouraging a paperless office culture. Gone are the days of printing of streams of CVs and job descriptions. 

•    Volunteering Days – every year we complete a few days volunteering days around London as a team, focussing on supporting the development and maintenance of the natural world. 

•    Suppliers – as part of our shortlisting and due diligence process for all suppliers we contract with - from banking to tech platforms and everything in between - we assess their sustainability credentials, seeking partners who share our values and approach wherever possible. 


Social

Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

As a recruitment company, it is our moral imperative to support the increase in equality, diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Furthermore, it is widely proven that companies who have a diverse employee makeup outperform those who do not. As such, we constantly challenge our practice to give customers confidence that we are doing as much as we can to support them in this area, ensuring that shortlists are reflective of all parts of society. There are numerous initiatives we focus on including:

1.    Training – all staff members regularly partake in on and off-line diversity and unconscious bias training, challenging our thinking and keeping the topic front of mind. 

2.    Partnerships - we are a partner to The Diversity Trust, ensuring we receive the most up to date content and thinking in the market. 

3.    Advertising - Our advertising platform is programmed with intelligent screening software that filters out gender typical terminology, ensuring adverts are appealing to all. 

4.    Performance – internal reviews of consultant job portfolios constantly assess diversity of longlists and challenges consultants to actively achieve greater balance wherever possible. 

5.    Blinding – CV’s include a range of personal information which could cause unconscious bias. Whilst studies are still assessing the impact of such practices, we can remove numerous items including names, education history, companies and dates to completely anonymise applicants if required. 

6.    Interviews - we encourage all clients to have multiple individuals involved in the shortlisting and interview process, ensuring that multiple points of view are represented throughout the hiring cycle. 

As a result of this approach, within our first two years of trading, we are really proud of the fact that 55% of our placements were female and 51% of our placements were of candidates from ethnically diverse backgrounds. 


Work Life Skills

We are also committed to utilising our experience and knowledge of the working world in a voluntary capacity to support areas of society that can benefit from our professional expertise. As part of our volunteering policy, we encourage all staff to spend up to four days a year giving back in this way. Some examples of how some of the team have spent their time include:

•    Careers Advisors – working in partnership with the Careers and Enterprise Company, we work with schools and colleges to support the development of employability programmes, providing students with real life insights and exposure to the working world. 

•    Charity Work – supporting charities in providing careers, application and interview advise to vulnerable young people and adults as they embark on returning to the workplace. 

•    Schools – volunteering as a governor at a school or college to bring valuable business insights to various whole school initiatives. 


Governance

The way that we work, our business practices and leadership culture reflects our commitment to making our own community and the communities that we touch a better place to be, now and in the future. We value leading with integrity and transparency because doing work is more than just doing a good job, its also doing the right thing. Some practical features of our business that demonstrate our commitment to this include:

•    Ownership - as an owner managed business, we are proud of having a gender mix in our ownership structure which we feel ensures we have a broad and balanced culture of decision making. 

•    Employees - we seek to empower our employees through clear lines of communication, a meritocratic career path plus transparent pay and reward which is reinforced by regular review, appraisals, goal setting and two way feedback. 

•    Accounting - we partner with outsourced accounts that are experts in our industry, ensuring that we are fully compliant with all tax and reporting requirements. 

•    Clients & Suppliers – we will continue to seek to partner with suppliers and clients that exhibit ethical governance arrangements and practices, and have indeed declined business from prospective clients for this reason in the past.  

•    Shared Ownership – we have a partnership model which provides the opportunity for top performers to have an equity stake in the company, and this is something we are seeking to expand to all employees in the future. 

This charter was approved by the board and reviewed annually.