The Sky Blue B2B Content Marketing Award 2020 is a sought after award that recognises the quality of Ardmac’s Corporate Social Responsibility projects and campaigns. The award is a testament to our teams who live the Ardmac Sky Blue Programme every day.
Ardmac has made considerable investments in its business with the introduction of guiding principles, mission and values alongside our corporate responsibility programme. Part of this process was to take our communication to a new level in terms of content marketing. We identified how to make a difference to our industry, engaging with clients, partners, the industry and relevant charities. At the same time it was equally important to us to engage all Ardmac employees in the understanding of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility).
We put in place a dedicated internal CSR team and committee, developing structured processes, a CSR agenda and activities for our people, partners and the industry. With a diverse work culture and European presence, our challenge was to engage our employees across various jurisdictions in community involvement and personal wellbeing.
The Ardmac programme outlines our commitments with a 3-year plan for activities in the three key areas Community, Wellness & Environment.
We received great feedback to our surveys, the outcome of which was a change to our culture:
- The industry we work in is tragically affected with mental health challenges
- Support nominated charities including Pieta House (ROI) and Mustard Tree (UK)
- Make a difference to the use of single use plastics across the industry
The Ardmac Sky Blue Programme went live in 2019 with enthusiastic teams reaching out to our clients, employees, the local communities and the industry.
We created a new website section dedicated to Sky Blue and introduced Sky Blue to our corporate communications. Our teams began to distribute the content of our approach across our main online channels; LinkedIn, twitter and later in the year we introduced our Instagram page.
Charity Work:
- We engaged with business and charities* in the community, *Manchester mind and Pieta House, British Plastics Federation and Construction Industry Federation to support and counsel our continuously developing approach.
- In relation to wellness, we maintained our nominated charities and introduced wellness cards for all so that they could be armed with information on who to talk to if affected by mental health issues.
Health & Wellness:
- Our teams developed site managers’ mental health handbooks as a toolkit for site managers and participated in several of our charity’s key events, including Darkness into light where 100 of our employees participated across 4 countries (Ireland, UK, Belgium & Amsterdam).
- 18 mental health first aiders were appointed across our business to support teams as on-site contacts.
- Our Be-at-Your-Best Employee Wellness Programme focused on lunchtime talks, fitness activities and nutritional wellness of our employees.
Waste:
- Ardmac introduced a segregated waste programme across our offices and completed a carbon and energy review across our business. We introduced eco fibre mugs across the business with a donation for every cup sold and developed a code of conduct, issued to all suppliers to sign up to our approach to waste and support our approach of eliminating single use plastics.
- All merchandise was reviewed and all single use plastics from our PPE packaging and other items were eliminated.
#Ardmac SKY Blue – Results that speak for themselves and motivation to continue our CSR engagement and efforts in the future.
The engagement of our teams to support our Sky-Blue programmes was incredibly positive. We have raised over €120k for charities since 2018, and launched our employee nominated charities with a focus on mental health (Pieta House and Manchester Mind.) which we continue to support now into 2021 based on its success.
Ardmac continue to work with organisations, such as Business in the Community UK and the Construction Industry federation, to support the development of our Sky-Blue agenda.
Our goals are to continue our work to reduce single use plastics across the construction industry. We have gathered our latest metrics and are currently reviewing our fleet and carbon footprint to reduce our impact further. In addition, we are currently in the process of developing our ‘Energy Management System’ and expect to achieve ISO 50001 certification in the second quarter of 2020, demonstrating our move towards renewable energy.
The prestigious Sky Blue B2B Content Marketing Award 2020 is a fantastic recognition of our work.
Without focused, efficient and meaningful Content Marketing we would have not been able to deliver our message or achieve what we did achieve. Our experience is that our commitment has made a difference and that we have definitely turned the Ardmac brand mission into reality.
