Esken remains committed to be being a good neighbour and having a positive social impact in the communities in which we operate. The focus for the group is on charitable giving, employee volunteering and gathering and reporting social impact.

Charitable Giving

This year each of our operational divisions established charity partnerships.  

  • Fareshare
  • Help for Heroes
  • Mind

Employee volunteering

Esken understands the benefit of employee volunteering to our community as well as our colleagues and will launch an employee volunteering during volunteering week 2022.  Through the working group an employee volunteering framework has been developed and has been aligned to our charitable giving, education, employment and skills programmes and environmental mitigation.

Education, employment & skills

One of the main ways Esken can positively impact its local community is to invest in local education programmes, employment initiatives and provide skills development.  We continue to develop our programmes but this year was focused on education and work experience.  Esken Renewables hosted three virtual work experiences.

Military Covenant

As a business that benefits from the transferable skills of armed forces professionals we are proud signatories of the Armed Forces Covenant. The team work proactively to encourage ex-service personal to join the business working with the Career Transition Partnership, developing relationships with local Reservist Units and work with recruitment agencies who share our ethos and are also Armed Forces Covenant accredited. The team have worked to put in place new support mechanisms and policies to support our armed forces veterans, volunteers, reservists and partners. They also work with their people champions and leadership team to ensure that we have the best support in place for our employees and have set up an Ex-Forces Yammer Group to develop our internal communications network across the business.

Esken Renewables have been members of the Armed Forces Covenant (Bronze) since 2020, gaining our Silver status in the same year and looking to ‘go for Gold’ in 2022.

Responsible Procurement

At Esken we understand the importance of working with our supply chain to positively contribute to our positive social impact and mitigating our environmental impact.

Supplier Code of Conduct

This year we introduced our Supplier Code of Conduct into our supply chain, which is aligned with our new corporate values.  The document sets out what suppliers can expect from Esken as well as the importance of fairness, social responsibility, sustainability and transparency that Esken expects from its supply chain.

Modern Slavery

Since 2020 we have annually reviewed our Modern Slavery Statement and Modern Slavery & Human Trafficking Policy.  On Anti-Modern Slavery Day we wrote to our colleagues to raise awareness of our policy and we have established compulsory training for all our colleagues.

Social Enterprises

Esken have introduced three social enterprises into our supply chain.

  • Wildhearts are our stationery provider and they offer young people employability skills to address social mobility in the UK.
  • Recycling Lives provide the safe and sustainable disposal of our uniforms and PPE and reduce reoffending through rehabilitating offenders, supporting homeless men and food distribution to vulnerable people.
  • Ethstat provided our branded mechanised as part of our values launch, they use the profits from our trading to fund community solutions to local problems ranging from ending homelessness to supporting families with dementia.