Better business.
Ambition: Ensure an accountable, ethical, inclusive, transparent, and resilient business.
Findel isn’t just about doing what is compliant and legal, but what is right. We are committed to avoiding green or social washing through transparency and measuring ourselves against consistent and stretching targets. Through a mix of conventional, sustainable, and global best practice, we use governance to help transform and shape our business for a low carbon economy. We put in place effective governance and compliance policies and processes for our business and that of our supply chain to enable alignment to SDG16: Peace, Justice & Strong Institutions.
An important part of our governance structure is our integrated ISO management system, comprising ISO9001:2015, ISO14001:2015 and ISO45001:2018 standards, which carries UKAS accredited certification and dates back over 2 decades, demonstrating our continued dedication to operational excellence.
We are approved by Tameside Trading Standards through their ‘Buy With Confidence’ scheme and also benefit from a Primary Authority Partnership to ensure compliance. Findel is also proud to be a member of the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) and is an advocate of the UNGC Sustainable Development Goals.
Findel’s Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals or Global Goals are a collection of seventeen interlinked objectives designed to serve as a “shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for people and the planet, now and into the future”.
The SDGs were formulated in 2015 by the United Nations General Assembly and emphasise the interconnected environmental, social, and economic aspects of sustainable development by putting sustainability at their centre.
The SDGs should support strategic growth within businesses by giving them a clear framework through which they can align their understanding of business purpose to. The SDG categories and sub-targets provide a mechanism that allows businesses to track their progress against set objectives and demonstrate measurable impact to an internal and external audience.
We have identified the 13 priority goals that closely align with our business activities which are summarised as shown in the info-graphic. Findel is committed to maintaining and strengthening the priorities which align to the company’s overarching ESG strategy.
Embracing equality, diversity
and inclusion.
Diverse perspectives, cultures and experiences have helped us support the education community for over 120 years. Our workforce is one of our greatest assets, reflecting differences in skills, regional and industry experience, background, race, ethnicity, gender, and other unique characteristics. As well as enabling better business outcomes, it’s also important that the diversity of our workforce is reflective of the communities and customer base that we serve.
Brilliance and being able to shine is at our core and we want our people to be true to themselves, embody our values, strive for greatness, take the challenge, be different and above all care for and help others be the best they can.
We look for people who want to inspire future generations and who play a part in moving Findel forward for the greater good. We want people to make our customers and suppliers glow by providing the best service possible and caring about what we do best for our business and the planet.
We recruit people who stand out from the crowd, take responsibility for seeking out what adds value and think outside the box. Above all we have people who look for strengths in their team, are generous with feedback and will contribute to our wider culture – always!
By the end of 2024…
We will continue to grow a culture of diversity and inclusion to support all our colleagues.
Our commitment
By 2028 we will ensure that 100% of our tier 1 suppliers in higher risk markets, defined by the Global Slavery Index top 10 and the Corruption Index top 10, have a full ethical audit with credible and recent sector-specific assessments recognised by SEDEX.
Our progress
We are now members of SEDEX and we are currently undergoing training on the SEDEX platform, to enable our suppliers to complete SEDEX SAQ and upload SMETA audits for high risk factories.
Having audits in place for suppliers in high-risk markets is a commitment tied into our sustainability linked loan facility and in FY23 we surpassed our target with the metric independently assured by RSM.
By the end of FY25…
We will have switched over 17% of our core product range to sustainable alternatives.
Sustainable sourcing.
Our commitment
By 2028 we will have switched 45% of our Classmates® product range for sustainable alternatives, or sustainably improved them with a focus on removing single-use plastics.
Our progress
We have focused on improving the product packaging of our Classmates range in 2022, with 7% of the range already improved.
