Because we care: our inside-out CSR initiative to continuously improve our global impact

As a consulting company, our mission is to positively impact our clients by helping them to connect the dots between strategy, technology and people. With our team of more than 60 people, we all share the same belief that supply chain and operations are drivers of sustainable growth. Yet, it doesn’t stop there. As the world is changing incredibly fast and the technological, social and environmental context is shifting at an unprecedented pace, we believe that our responsibility has grown broader than just offering the best services to our clients. Both collectively as well as individually, we believe we must act in order to monitor, assess and mitigate our direct and indirect impact on our society, our environment and our planet.

An initiative from within: Because we care

So, in the summer of 2018, a group of like-minded Bluecrux colleagues came together and shared the enthusiasm to change the mindset of our company from within. Why would they want to do that? Because we care. And that’s immediately what the initiative became known as: Because we care. After some brainstorming sessions, we agreed on the following mission statement:

“Develop a Bluecrux that actively recognizes its responsibility toward its workforce, in society and toward the environment and aims to leverage its impact to inspire others.”

Moreover, we structured our overall initiative into three focus areas that include multiple objectives:

• Eco: Grow toward a zero-waste, CO² neutral company
• Social: Incorporate a structured, recurring commitment toward social objectives
• Workforce: Support a healthy and engaged workforce

Getting the entire company on board

While the initiative was started by a core team of six beecees, a sustainable, long-term impact can only be achieved when all Bluecrux colleagues are engaged and on board. That’s exactly why we have the following clear objective for 2019:

“Change the mindset of Bluecrux colleagues through the creation of awareness, knowledge and desire to participate and engage in the initiative that we call ‘because we care.’”

Following the Bluecrux belief of “think big, start small, scale fast”, we developed an ambitious long-term roadmap, starting with an already very concrete action: getting colleagues to carpool.

Carpooling for society

The idea was very simple: involve all Bluecrux colleagues for this first because we care about action by making them carpool with each other (to the office, to a client, to an event, etc.). With the help of some WhatsApp groups to support the practical arrangements and the incentive of a free carwash in mind, the results built up very quickly. Throughout the first couple of months of 2019, we already got 50 happy (and sometimes sleepy) colleagues sharing a drive, which equals 25 cars off the road, in February alone.*

*Update May 2019: Having already taken about 100 cars off the road, we have saved already 12,474 kilometers of air pollution (about the distance from our Mechelen office to Honolulu).

*Update September 2019: Having already taken about 190 cars off the road, we now saved 23,900 kilometers of air pollution (twice the distance from our Belgian to our US office, back and forth).

Of course, our ambition doesn’t stop with something as simple (yet effective) as carpooling. We will continue to execute our roadmap and look for ways to reduce and improve our impact. So, look out for #becausewecare (or #BCWC in short) updates throughout the year, as we’ll be back. Because we care!