Media Isle of Man had the honour of being part of Energy Sustainability Centre's recent 'Roundtable' session, organised by MMC and hosted by Capital International Group.
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00:00100%. 100%. I mean, in fact, Zurich has a 2030 plan, not a 2050 plan, so we've had to take our own actions in terms of renewable energy, but also, as Anthony talked about, it is when you, so the energy thing is the simple part, it's that carbon, it's that carbon offsetting, isn't it, so you don't realise how much post you're sending out and the cost of the post and the production of the paper,
00:29and the energy involved in getting that piece of post to someone, especially if you're an international business, you've got to send a letter to Hong Kong, you know, force or whatever else, so understanding that the broader carbon piece has been a real journey for us outside of everything that we talk about from an energy perspective,
00:49so yeah, so I think if we can talk about how we can do that as a business, then I think people can start to think about how they do that in their day-to-day life as well, you know, so we're trying to encourage customers now to transact online, you know, we've had a target at Zurich to give customers, at least customers, a choice to transact online, you know,
01:17rather than force them online, but over time, you'd like to think that customers will want to transact online because they can do it when they want to do it and how they want to do it, you know, it's in their own time, but at least we can now offer customers the ability to transact at Zurich International Online, which has seen us reduce our paper considerably, because you can generate a PDF and put that in someone's online mailbox,
01:45and then they can save that onto their computer, and you don't need to print it anymore, because it's there, a record, if you need it, or we can create an online mailbox, which we have done for a lot of our corporate customers, customers can come in to their site and look at a document whenever they need it, they can forward it on to somebody if they need to send it as proof of evidence, you know, there's all of these things have helped with that reduction in carbon, you know, notwithstanding, we say,
02:15and everything else that's gone on as well.
02:19It's often the case, though, I think, where people miss what's coming generationally, and I think if you tie it back to the old man's ambitions, certainly around growing population, for the businesses who are already here and future businesses to attract the next generation of talent, and the next generation of customers, this is going to be the thing they are going to want to know first.
02:42What's your sustainability policy? What's your approach to reducing your carbon as a company? And that is then, if we're going to go out into the world and try and attract more people to the island, going to be a big USP for the Isle of Man in the future, if we can say we're doing so much here to be a pioneer on that front as well.
02:58That's priority number one for the next generation. We're getting to that point already, tipping point, with things like buying the latest iPhone every couple of years. That's going fast, and the next generation is coming through.
03:09I think it's, I don't want to take for granted that the energy situation is going to solve itself. I think it will solve itself, and I think there's a good momentum now, and we need to get that closed.
03:18For me, well, for us as an organisation, 75% of our emissions are in transport, and I don't have a strategy for that. I can't force people to switch to EVs. I can encourage it, but I can't force it.
03:33I think the other massive issue that we have yet to address, and I don't know whether Mark has really looked at, is waste and waste management. At the moment, we have wheelie bins out the back, and everything gets tipped into the wheelie bin, apart from confidential shredding, and there's massive change that has to take place there.
03:52We're really on to it, really excited by it, but we're doing it on our own, and that's the bit that I find still challenging, and it's all hard work because there isn't an infrastructure to support it at the moment.
04:07We've put recycling bins in our building for our staff to use because trying to recycle at home can be tricky, so people can come and do their recycling at Zurich, and then we'll have that recycled, even if it's at a cost to us to do that.
04:26One of the things that we've done, but the commuting piece is really interesting. I think because of electricity costs at home, people have started to come back to the office because they can use our electricity and our heating.
04:45Zurich, we've got the solar array, and that generates 50% of our electricity, or roughly 50% of our electricity. Next step is battery storage, because I think if we can take ourselves off grid and then start giving back to the island, we can start to offset some of our commuting costs.
05:08There are other things, like we've talked to DOI about bus routes up to the business park, and we've tried to give them the DOI demographics of where our staff live.
05:25There are buses from Douglas to the business park, there are buses down to the town, and then there are buses up to the business park, but there aren't buses to the business park, and there's thousands of people working up at that business park.
05:40From south and north of the island as well, there are buses that come to the business park in the morning, but then there isn't a collection bus in the evening, so people have to walk down to the end of Court Road to pick a bus up to go.
05:55Staff at Zurich said 50% of them wouldn't change their driving habits, they want their car because they want their flexibility because they've got school runs to do or whatever else it is, but another 50% said they would change their habits and take a bus if they could get a direct bus to the business park, and another 50% said they would consider it.
06:19Once people start to see that 50% get the bus and it's regular and it's consistent, the other 50% will follow. So there are things that we can do and work with government on to improve that side of things, outside of trying to make ourselves free of energy, it's free of wind use energy, which is obviously what we're trying to do at the moment.
06:45From a recruitment point of view, has Zurich seen a shift in terms of the attitude, i.e. the messages that you're giving out to future employers or existing employers, is it retaining more and also is it actually making recruitment easier, which is a really, really difficult market out there.
07:09I think we've got 350 unemployed, we've got 1500 people looking for jobs, it is a really tight market to be an employer these days. So have you seen a shift, have you seen an attitude shift there?
07:21I think last year people were saying that they chose Zurich over other companies because of our pillar stance on sustainability, but to answer his point as well, when you've got community activities going on, it inspires people to stay. So we've seen retention improve in the last 24 months as well, of people wanting to stay with Zurich.
07:47There is always people coming off the island and people moving around companies, but we have seen less turnover and then people saying that they chose us because they liked our stance on sustainability and the solar array or whatever else we were doing, the plant, the stuff that we do in the community, we've done stuff in the wildlife park before.
08:16I put Archallagan this year, those types of things inspire people to want to come and work at companies that want to support the community.
08:26So in some ways it's a cost-saving exercise being involved because you're not having to recruit, you're not losing staff, the turnover is less, you're not having to look to then advertise to bring in more staff, retrain etc.
08:39We've never tried to cast the numbers over that, but recruiting is a competitive marketplace and there is no doubt that it provides some competitive edge and I'm sure that if you were to run the numbers then you'd be quite surprised at what the cost implication of that might be.
08:58We talk to lots of people, we recruit lots of people and the sustainability piece is an important part of the closure of bringing people to the business and the community piece is a very important part in terms of retention.
09:17Of course the other by-product of retention is you get more experienced people in your business, which means that service to your customers is better as well because you haven't got that triumph of people always in training and everyone has to start somewhere.
09:34Whereas if you've got people that are skilled in the business, that has a better impact for us as well, so the retention of staff means less turnover which means better experience for our customers and quicker turnaround times and everything else.
09:47There are other by-products to that as well.