Human-Centric Metrics in Sustainability: What can EVORA do for our people and communities?

By Lucy Curtis and Emily Day

Over a year has passed since the pandemic hit the UK and our workplaces changed dramatically. Increased homeworking has led to a heightened consciousness of the social impact that EVORA, as a company, can have on its people.

The past year has given us countless reasons for our health and wellbeing scales to tip off-balance. We have lost the regular exercise during our daily commute, have been torn away from our emotional support circles and are at a greater risk of anxiety, stress and depression than ever before. Before the pandemic, we would typically spend 90% of our time indoors and staggering 9.5 hours a day sat down. You can only imagine how these figures have increased since Lockdown #1. It’s become ever more important to stay on top of our fitness, our diets and our mindfulness during these tough times to ensure our physical health, mental health and emotional wellbeing endures the long journey back to normality.

That’s why EVORA staff chose to tackle the Feeling Fab in February Challenges. Over the course of 28 days, our staff pushed themselves to do heart-pumping exercise, get the nutritional benefit from switching to plant-based diets and practicing mindfulness.

Assigning metrics to social impact

Measuring and monitoring impact is key to implementing meaningful programmes. Demonstrating additionality – that you have meaningfully added to the lives of individuals – is arguably the most important aspect of human-centric sustainability reporting. EVORA have used some of our own activities to model reporting examples below.

Wellbeing Uplift

Through a month of activity (and nothing less than a bit of healthy competition), Feeling Fab in February encouraged our team to take part in a month of fitness, carbon-conscious eating and mindfulness. Together, and in only one month, we managed to achieve:

• +148 additional mindfulness or meditation sessions
• +88 additional workouts than we would have done
• +84 additional days without meat or dairy than usual

‘’Fab February made me reflect on my current habits and encouraged me to make healthy changes to my daily routines!’’

EVORA employee

Our team felt the mental and physical benefits, as well as the benefits to social cohesion at a time when it’s easy to feel disconnected from colleagues. We are now looking for the next challenge to promote healthy habits in our home-working and beyond as we look to return to the ‘new normal’.

Social Value

We are very proud to announce that EVORA has achieved Planet Mark certification for the 7^th year running. The Planet Mark is an internationally recognised certification based on sustainability standards and its mission is to help us all contribute to a thriving planet as a collective force. The certification represents an organisation’s commitment to sustainability programmes to actively reduce environmental and social harm. 

For the past two years, we have also measured our social value contribution. Social value, by definition, is the net social and environmental benefit generated to society by an organisation, expressed in ‘£’. In 2019, EVORA generated £454,644 in social value. This includes over £400,000 through actions relating to the people in our organisation and supply chain, as well as money and time donated to charitable organisations, and reducing our carbon footprint through commutes.

In 2020, EVORA generated £61,197 in social value. This has been through actions relating to the people in our organisation and supply chain, as well as money and time donated to charitable organisations, and reducing our carbon footprint through commutes.

Visit our Health & Wellbeing webpage to see the healthy building services we offer at EVORA.