GCC Facilities Management is committed to delivering a safe and sustainable service in line with the Public Services (Social Value) Act 2012. Stephen Hooley (Commercial Director) acts as our Social Value Champion and monitors performance against commitments reporting quarterly to commissioning authorities. We include a corporate and social responsibility section at monthly management meetings.
Social and Economic
We provide an attractive staff package with a mix of Full/Part time positions and are committed to paying the Living Wage. We operate flexible working policies to support people’s work-life balance, run cycle-to-work and opticians voucher schemes and invest significantly in staff training and development to upskill the team and increase employability. All staff training is paid for.
We support our self-employed teams with setup and business advice and provide assistance with policy development and training on the job.
We are an equal opportunities employer, recruiting from all sectors of society and we undertake targeted recruitment in contract areas. We commit to 99% of scheduled cleaning to be undertaken by local people and all Area Managers will be recruited from the local workforce. We monitor the ethnicity of our workforce and any gender pay gaps. At present over 50% of our cleaners are from a BAME background and there is no gender pay gap.
Development programmes include apprenticeships for cleaners and supervisors, and we have also worked alongside Remploy and supported their programmes for enabling people with Learning Disabilities to access opportunities in the job market and increase their independence.
Charitable Contributions
All GCC staff receive 2 days paid time off per annum to undertake voluntary work (Approx. £9,200 per annum cost to the company).
We provide free office space to Cruse Bereavement Counselling (offer support, advice and information to children, young people and adults when someone dies) at our Head Office in Sutton, Surrey (£8k per annum).
Our fundraising activity over the last 12 months includes:
- Sport Relief (£100)
- Dementia UK (£135)
- Breast Cancer Wear it Pink Days (£130)
- Tadworth Childrens Trust (£803)
For Tadworth Childrens Trust, we provide labour to help with fundraising days and 3 members of staff supported their most recent fireworks night. Within the community, we raise money for the cancer department at Royal Marsden Hospital and sponsor football teams (£75) and the Vision dance troupe (£100) in Stoke on Trent.
Environment
GCC is ISO:14001 accredited. Our Environmental Management system ensures we protect and improve the environment through good management, adopting best practices and greener alternatives wherever possible. Andrew Hogg is responsible for monitoring and reporting on our environmental performance and we are audited annually to ensure our accreditation remains current and best practice is embedded.
Good practice is built into our service. For example, we use steam cleaning wherever possible (e.g. 100% for Premier Inn) to reduce our reliance on chemical alternatives. Where steam cleaning is not implemented, we use eco-friendly cleaning chemicals. Training in safe and proper use ensures our team only use the chemicals they need. For example, all staff must spray cleaning products onto damp cloths, not surfaces, ensuring there is no waste and no unnecessary runoff.
We are working towards becoming a paper free environment and meetings are undertaken remotely via video conferencing wherever possible and beneficial. We have extensive recycling facilities at our offices and use only environmentally friendly goods/services minimising energy usage and waste. For example, we use only reusable cloths, have energy saving light bulbs across our premises, use light sensors and screensavers scheduling automatic shutdown of desktops/laptops to reduce energy consumption.
All Area Managers, Field Service Managers and Directors have either self-charging hybrid or plug in electric cars (25 in total). Our commitment to implementing a green fleet companywide began in 2014 and was a board decision as a commitment to improving our environmental performance.
Distribution of all cleaning products is undertaken by Lyreco who use only electric vehicles and quarterly ordering for all sites reduces congestion through reducing the number of deliveries.