Sustainability
Our passion is to produce as much good as possible!
Greenstep started its goal-oriented and systematic sustainability work with our first very own Sustainability Officer in the spring of 2019. Before that, the values of the agile family business had already guided the growth in a sustainable direction. We created the core ethical principles of our business into the Code of Conduct in collaboration with our employees from different cities, services, teams, and age groups.
Once per year, we publish a Sustainability Report summarizing the sustainability work's results of last year and objectives for the following year. The latest Sustainability Report was published in May of 2022. Systematically, we have lowered and reduced the carbon emissions of our operations as of 2019. Check out our CO2 Road Map from the Sustainability Report: as promised, we will be carbon neutral from 2022 onwards.
At Greenstep, sustainability is part of the whole organization and everyone's work. It's reflected in everyday activities and everything we do, such as procurement, travel, safer work community principles, recruitment, skills development, and investments. The work can be genuinely impactful only when sustainability is at the heart of all activities.
Over the years, the sustainability work has expanded beyond organizational boundaries, and Greenstep's first Sustainability Officer, Ella Tanskanen, is now the Head of Sustainability Services. Our experienced sustainability team helps our customers comprehensively develop sustainable business and competitiveness.
Greenstep's values
Desire to help our customers
We listen to our customers and their wishes. In practice, we want our work to be flawless and kind, and we aim to always finish the job on time. Skillfully performed work and mutual trust constitute the foundation for high-quality customer service.
Will to renew and develop our expertise
Greenstep’s selection of services is updated according to the needs of our customers, which brings about new kinds of challenges. Solving these challenges and learning new things are some of the greatest sources of motivation out there. Continuous development also ensures the highest level of competence in the services we provide to our customers.
Honesty and appreciation towards each other
Feedback is given honestly at Greenstep. The words ‘thank you’ are something you hear every day. The expertise and help of our colleagues are appreciated, and we are genuinely equal regardless of our titles. Each of us respects one another and everyone has the right to be themselves.
Passion to achieve and succeed together
Succeeding together means a shared goal for the customers and the team, everyone strives to be the best! It pushes us towards self-improvement and out of our comfort zone.
Equal and healthy working community
Our success is based on our experts, and their well-being is vital to us. We promote our employees’ well-being by supporting health and the ability to work. For example, we encourage active lifestyles through employee benefits and annual well-being challenges and ensure an open and communal work atmosphere. Equality and appreciation of other people are also strongly linked to Greenstep's fundamental values. We act according to the safer work community principles and monitor how equality is practiced through our annual employee satisfaction surveys.
Our community spirit and employee satisfaction levels are high and surveyed weekly. Surveying the employee vibe weekly enables us to keep up to date with the well-being of our personnel and detect possible shortcomings and address them fast. In addition, the eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) is 72, which is a very good result.
Greenstep’s Code of Conduct was established with our employees, determining the main principles guiding the business. It ensures that our business practices are ethical and that we're trustworthy of our customers. The principles are introduced to all Greensteppers during their induction period, and the entire personnel is committed to observing them in their daily work.
High-quality competence development
The will to reinvent and develop ourselves is one of Greenstep’s values and a promise of quality we give to our customers. We support our experts to develop themselves through customer projects and internal training. Greenstep Academy provides versatile and high-quality topical training events and longer training paths for every Greenstep member. We recommend that all accounting experts complete the Finnish KLT accounting certification and wage management experts complete their corresponding PHT certification. We support people aiming to complete these through our preparatory training programmes.
Competence development is part of our social responsibility, and we participate in various collaboration projects with, for example, universities. On top of that, our subsidiary Carestep was founded to develop competence. Carestep provides high-quality cleaning service to its customers and uses 100 % of its profits on its employees' education and career counseling. The company's objective is to provide full-time employment and guarantee a fair wage and equip the employees with better skills to move forward in their careers one day.
Environmentally sustainable choices
We make environmentally sustainable choices in all business areas and are committed to being carbon neutral from 2022 onwards. We seek to achieve this target by reducing and systematically avoiding greenhouse gases in all our functions, which we have illustrated in our CO2 Road Map. Examples of our measures to reduce carbon emissions are switching to renewable energy in all our offices and purchasing CO2 compensated products and services when possible, to name a few. We will also include waste accounting in our footprint calculation for next year. Unavoidable emissions are compensated using Compensate Credits.
Responding to climate change is globally critical for societies and businesses, so we have named the environment as one of our stakeholders and discussed environmental sustainability expectations at Greenstep with the Baltic Sea Action Group. From an environmental standpoint, pro bono work and investments can also make an effective difference. That's why in 2021, Greenstep decided on a significant investment for the climate: it announced it would invest at least 10 % of its result in renewable energy in the next five years. The first investment of €3 million was made at the end of the year in Ålandsbanken's Wind Power Fund Non-UCITS fund. The fund invests the assets in wind farms in Finland and other Nordic countries. We want to do our part in climate action and believe these investments will help build a better future.
You can read more about our stakeholder discussions and environmentally sustainable choices in our Sustainability Report 2021.
Economic sustainability and governance
Economic responsibility produces sustainable well-being, and our operations generate not just economic value added but also social and environmental impacts. Our offices in different locations in Finland support the business development of our local customers and local innovation, employment, and growth. Growth has enabled business continuity and customer-driven development of operations - we want to acknowledge that everyone at Greenstep is an important part of our company's success and can enjoy the results of success and a job well done. Therefore, we decided to establish an annual “Yhdessä” reward scheme where we distribute 10% of the Greenstep group's operating profit directly as rewards to the personnel.
At Greenstep, economic responsibility also entails direct responsible investments in Finnish growth companies and renewable energy.
We are proud taxpayers, and we do not practice aggressive tax planning. We contribute to building a prosperous society by paying our taxes in total in each country we operate in. We have calculated our tax footprint, which you can find in our Sustainability Report of 2021.
Safer Space principles for all Greensteppers
Be open & listen
Let’s not make assumptions about gender, sexual orientation, religion, physical ability, background, or other personal characteristics.
Words matter
Let’s select them carefully and with respect without assumptions. Example: If we don't know each other yet, we can avoid making assumptions by using gender-neutral expressions such as spouse or partner.
Let’s not comment on physical appearance
We don't comment, especially on others' bodies, even though we would consider them to be positive.
Let’s be curious to challenge stereotypes and learn
Each of us can still have stereotypes. We all make mistakes from time to time. It is important to give and receive feedback, learn from mistakes, give others space to learn, and apologize if we hurt someone.
Let’s take everybody on board
No one is left behind.