Sustainability

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development , adopted by all United Nations Member States in 2015, provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future. At its heart are the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which are an urgent call for action by all countries - developed and developing - in a global partnership. They recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests. (United Nations)

A forward thinking organisation.

Phonovation has always been a forward thinking organisation and has always tried to keep it’s employees at it’s heart. To take this a step further for 2024 and future years, we have incorporated 6 of the SDG’s into our overall business strategy and filtering down through each of its departments strategies. Phonovation held a strategy day in November 2023 for all staff and at this event the meaning and understanding of each of the SDG’s were discussed. Employees voted for the ones that they felt were most relevant to them and after a consensus, we agree on 6 SDG’s that with would align with.

We are not only aiming to align to the SDG’s below but we also aiming to reduce our carbon footprint and we began tracking our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions in 2022. We hope over 2024 that we can start to look and plan for how we would collect data and measure our scope 3 emissions.

This is a very exciting time for us, so please join us on our sustainability journey and check back with us for updates on our progress.

This SDG concerns ensuring healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages.

Phonovation already promote healthy lifestyles within it’s organizational by offering a voucher for gym membership and offering employees full medical checkups biannually. We have not formulary tracked the progress of these initiatives in the past, but we have started tracking in 2024. We also do regular fun competitions such as “most steps in a month”. Our HR team will also be looking into more initiatives that Phonovation can promote and how we can measure these.

This SDG concerns inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.

Phonovation run a book club and have a designated fund for training and education for all employees. We regularly do lunch and learns to promote internal cross functional learning. Again, we have not formulary tracked the take up of these initiatives but have started this process in 2024.

This SDG concerns achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls.

Phonovation strive to have an equal splitting of cv’s when hiring for a roles to ensure that males and females have equal opportunities. Interviews are conducted with a questionnaire relevant to the job role and a scoring matrix that is the same for all individuals. Salaries increases or negotiations are done through bench marking data to ensure that all salaries are paid for duties done in your role and are not based on gender or ethnicity. We will be analyzing and reporting on gender pay in 2024.

This SDG is around promoting sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all.

We will be looking at this SDG in more detail in 2024 to understand what KPI’s we will put in place to measure it.

**Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure**

The 9th SDG is around building resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialization and foster innovation.

Phonovation strives to achieve greater innovation. We already have “small i” innovations created by individuals, but we would like to focus more on the “big I’s”. Two of it’s staff members John Waters and Ruth Mulvaney attended the Innovation 4 Growth programme with IMI and MIT.

The last SDG that we have chosen concerns strengthening the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Goals.

The UN recognise that it is not possible for organisations to reach it’s goals without partnerships. This is something that Phonovation has taken on in 2024 and is looking for ways to partner with other organisations to create innovations to lead to a more sustainable future.