We don’t just want to be the partner of choice for our customers, we want our employees, communities and suppliers to continue to choose us. Improving employee wellbeing, making meaningful connections with our local communities and protecting our environment is an important part of our ethos to make more possible.
Without our bunch of talented people, we wouldn’t be able to make more possible. We want everyone to be proud of working at APS, creating a culture where all of our employees feel valued and enjoy working within a healthy and safe environment. We’re proud to have signed up to the Workplace Wellbeing Charter. The Charter is a health, safety and wellbeing award scheme endorsed by Public Health England (an executive agency sponsored by the UK Government’s Department of Health and Social Care).
As well as this, we’re busy introducing a volunteer programme, growing the number of apprentices and continuing our commitment to the Disability Confident Award.
As an employer we recognise that in the UK, people experiencing mental ill health continue to report stigma and discrimination at work. Having signed the ‘Charter for Employers Positive about Mental Health’, we are committed to creating a supportive and open culture, where colleagues feel able to talk about mental health confidently, and aspire to appropriately support the mental wellbeing of all staff. This includes Mental Health First Aiders, wellbeing hub and employee assistance programme.
From Stockport to Edinburgh, it’s important that we support the growth of our local communities, either through voluntary, community or social enterprise activity. Whether we’re on a charity mission, mentoring and supporting a local social enterprise or offering creative workshops for design students, our work in the community is diverse.
We’re pleased to say that we transitioned from ISO 14001:2004 to ISO 14001:2015 and IS0 9001:2015. We’re also a proud contributor to the Woodland Carbon Capture scheme. One recent initiative with the Department for Work and Pensions has seen us preserve 14,700 m2 of critically threatened tropical forest at WLT Carbon Balanced Paper project sites.
In fact, 100% of our paper across the business is FSC® or PEFC™ accredited, meaning that the paper we use is from a managed crop source. Once it’s been harvested it’s then replanted within UK reservations.
We also are accredited by EcoVadis in one of the top 25% of companies in our industry as well as supporting the Terra Carta charter, where we will look to be Carbon Neutral by 2040.
FSC Certificate
PEFC Certificate
EcoVadis Silver Certificate
Stronger supply partnerships are simply better for business. We work with a huge variety of companies, including numerous SMEs helping growth and sharing knowledge. Since the start of our contract with the Scottish Government in 2010, we have increased our Scottish SME supply chain to number over 200 partners. We hold supplier workshops and have introduced supplier feedback management, offering consultancy on specialist areas such as ISO accreditations.
We’re also members of the Slave Free Alliance (SFA) and have worked with them to review our onboarding and assessment procedures to identify any risks in our supply chain. Across 1,200 suppliers in 16 countries, none were identified as having significant, negative social impact but we will continually work with the SFA to audit and review our supply chain.