Suzie Ruffley & Holly Hesketh – Sustainability in HR

Holly Hesketh, ‘People and Sustainable Culture Manager’ at Foresight Group, started by taking us through her amazingly successful career journey. Holly highlighted the importance of grasping every opportunity in order to “add things to your belt.” Not only does this make you a valuable candidate for HR recruiters, but as Suzie later mentioned, “there’s nothing more complex than people, so working on personal development is essential.” After graduating from university, Holly interviewed for an HR role through Oakleaf and landed a position with Foresight. She quickly progressed to her current role as People & Sustainable Culture Manager, following the rebrand of the HR team earlier this year to truly reflect Foresight’s values.

 With Foresight being a sustainably led investment company, Suzie and Holly shared their knowledge on ways to incorporate sustainability into a company’s values and why this is so important moving forward. Sustainability is all about looking at ways to future-proof a business, which starts with creating a positive working environment. Suzie and Holly explained that by receiving constant employee feedback through regular engagement surveys, businesses can implement meetings about challenges within the company to accelerate positive change. In order to maximise development within the workplace, it’s essential to create a “psychologically safe culture,” as well as take an open and welcoming approach to allow problem sharing and improvement.

 It’s becoming widely understood that sustainability creates business value for long-term prosperity, but what does it mean to be a sustainable business? Suzie and Holly defined a sustainable business culture as one which operates with a strong ESG focus, policies and practices. Additionally, a sustainable culture means attracting top talent and retaining these individuals. Suzie highlighted that “having a sustainable culture means thinking about longevity in approach,” which is why Foresight introduce sustainability at the first stages of recruitment. This means sharing knowledge and best practices to ensure everyone in the company has baseline knowledge around sustainability.

 Ensuing from Suzie and Holly’s discussion, there was time for additional questions with knowledgeable responses from our guest speakers and lots of food for thought. This was followed by drinks in the sunshine – a great opportunity for our attendees to network with like-minded individuals in HR.

 We would like to express our gratitude to Suzie, Holly and Foresight Group for hosting this terrific event and providing such an incredible venue. Additionally, we would like to thank all who attended for their continuing support of our fantastic talent community.

 With our next OP Academy event coming up in September, we’re looking forward to seeing some familiar faces returning. Please get in touch with Robyn Wells below if you would like to receive an invitation to our future events.