Interview: Live – SkootEco axis of staffing best practice
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FMBE’s Frank Wainwright talked to Live’s Leyton Ede about staffing and the agency’s environmental allegiance to SkootEco.
Presentation – Live’s carbon offset explained
Doubling down on doing the right thing is a tenet of Leyton Ede’s brand experience event staffing business Live, an agency that emerged intact through the dark corridors of COVID having first furloughed and then diversified to keep hold of its talent pool and its caring reputation.
From those days of COVID testing sites, Live MD, Leyton Ede, now sees positives from the industry going into Pandemic hiatus, pointing out that post-Covid the glass ceiling of £12 per hour had been broken and staff quality was higher on the agenda than before.
For an agency that is keen to deliver quality jobs, and is not prepared to see staff provision commoditised, finding some wage headroom was a real bonus, enabling it to retain more star performers.
Another lasting legacy of the Pandemic has been the way that big companies understand the environmental impact of staff movement. The work from home didn’t suit every type of business but all who managed it lessened their environmental impact.
For Live, moving towards more sustainable practice happened naturally as business efficiency and the environment dovetailed. Recycling, including uniforms, was a prerequisite. Efficient journey plans were a necessity, now augmented with electric vehicles.
“We were focused on sustainability without having something tangible to show for it”, says Leyton.
That’s where SkootEco comes in. SkootEco calls itself “a sustainability partner for climate positive action, a simple-to-use carbon footprint management solution for businesses and their customers” . It acheives this through multiple activities including tree planting. SkootEco is a popular system for responsible carbon offsetting and can calculate your company’s carbon footprint for you.
For Live there was positive news when this happened as its responsible practice meant just £0.67p per person offsets.
“It’s an optional charge to our clients and then we as a business match that” says Leyton. So, typically Live now offsets double the carbon it uses.
The 67p offset is the average per staff supplied per day based on SkootEco’s calculation across 12 months of Live’s activities, taking into account every step Live takes from booking through to fulfilment.
To flesh out the cost, Leyton tells me – 5 staff, 5 days = 25 days = £16.75 = 250kg CO2. By doubling that, it equates to a 500kg offset.
As SkootEco is a B Corp, says Leyton, the process is very transparent and you can see what is happening in terms of trees planted and plastic bottles being removed from the environment.
SkootEco is a sustainability partner for climate positive action. Clients include Coventry Building Society Arena, Addison Lee, Amazonico and Matthew Street Festival
