By John Pearce, CEO Made in Britain
I was delighted to be invited to join the Advisory Panel at the UN Global Compact UK Network (UNGC-UK) to represent and promote our sector within this worldwide community of responsible business leadership.
The aim of the UNGC globally and in the UK is to mainstream responsible, sustainable business.
Sharing many core values with Made in Britain, the UNGC-UK community genuinely cares about, and promotes, the highest ethical standards in business, offering content, and events and support to help people develop and grow professionally. It is the world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative, with more than 12,000 member companies in 160 countries. As a part of the UNGC-UK network, Made in Britain can share an extensive library of campaigns, tutorials, webinars and archive content named Academy with our members. SME manufacturers are a priority for UNGC-UK in 2023.
There are many other benefits to being part of a globally recognised group, which together can help make your manufacturing business more resilient, more profitable and a fulfilling and attractive place to work for everyone. Members can demonstrate leadership by advancing responsible corporate citizenship, leveraging the UN's global network and recognition. Interaction with the UNGC-UK network can help to manage new risks by taking a proactive stance on critical environmental and employment issues. By sharing your best practices, and successful environmental, social and governance (ESG) actions you’ll also be learning from others, accessing the UN's broad knowledge and experience in development issues. This collaborative learning approach is essential if we are to address the most pressing resource issues for our sector.
Our Green Growth programme, free to all Made in Britain members, was designed in collaboration with the UNGC-UK, Cambridge Judge Business School eMBA programme, and inspired by the universally agreed goals of SDG12, responsible production and consumption. Once members have completed their first assessment, it’s much easier to see the whole sustainability picture of their business and know where to head to fill in some of the gaps. The UNGC’s Academy and programme of presentations throughout the year is being redesigned to include more content for SME businesses. We are working with the UNGC-UK teams to make this content accessible and useful for manufacturers that share the unique set of interlinked challenges around resource scarcity, affordable green energy and waste value management.
The board of directors at Made in Britain articulate our shared belief in high standards with our code of conduct, which our 2,000+ members must re-affirm every time they renew their annual licence to use the collective, official mark. Our code of conduct is unique to Made in Britain, having been drafted from the starting point of the UNGC’s 10 universal principals, established in June 2004. We consider the success of our membership is a direct result of manufacturers setting and exceeding high standards in innovation, collaboration, product quality, communication and personnel/resource management. Keeping aligned with other business sectors around the world and in the UK under a shared set of values helps make British manufacturing more attractive and helps us to grow the perception of trust people have when they see the official Made in Britain mark on products and online.
We will post updates on Made in Britain’s participation at the UNGC-UK Advisory Panel in our Green Growth News section.
Should members have any questions about the UNGC-UK network or the Green Growth programme, please send them to info@madeinbritain.org with UNGC-UK in the subject line.
By Made in Britain 2 years ago | By Made in Britain