Environment, Sustainability and Governance

Environment and Sustainability

From the time Q3 was formed in 2018, our people have adopted an agile working model – an approach that (as a result of the Covid pandemic) has become popularised as “flexible” or “hybrid” working. As a result, we have a small, corporate building footprint, a distributed workforce with fast access to our clients and an inherently carbon-efficient way of working.

Our cleaning business takes a sustainable approach to the materials we use in every cleaning process. We shun the use of dangerous chemicals in favour of non-toxic, less harmful alternatives, with a neutral pH. Plus, we’ve streamlined the range of cleaning chemicals needed for all cleaning situations to a handful, minimising the use of single-use plastics and ensuring that all packaging is recyclable.

Working in the natural environment, our Grounds team takes its environmental responsibility extremely seriously too. We work to a strong environmental policy and carefully select the latest chemicals to eliminate or minimise the amount of environmental damage caused. And of course, all the green waste we remove from our site is 100% recycled.

We are already utilising battery-powered tools and ride-on mowers on many contracts to reduce our reliance on petrol and diesel and we have plans to move to electric fleet vehicles by 2026, as part of our plan for Net Zero.

How we go about our business ethically

Ethics are important to the way we work and underpins the individual and collective approach to the way Q3 people carry out their daily tasks. We were one of the first Living Wage Foundation recognised service providers which means that we have committed to paying all directly employed members of staff, not tied to client contracts, the Real Living Wage.

We have established policies for Safeguarding and modern-day slavery and all client-facing employees have DBS and Right to Work vetting.

Q3 aligns with other socially and environmentally aware suppliers, working wherever possible with small, family independent companies – 90% of our supply chain is made up of this type of organisation.

Our culture is inherently one of openness and transparency which is reflected directly in the open-book approach we adopt on virtually all our contracts.

Client satisfaction surveys reflect the fact that we not only do the work we are contracted to do, but we do it in a spirit of partnership. Our Net Promoter Score (a measure of customer experience) is currently 40, an excellent result when benchmarked against other, major industry players.

People, Training and Community

Q3 enjoys high staff retention rates because one of our core values is Quality People and we make sure we look after everyone in the Q3 family.

As well as our commitment to paying the Real Living Wage, we invest heavily in apprenticeships and training, clocking up over 1,400 hours in training and development last year. Our teams are experienced but at Q3, the training never stops because it’s pointless spending on technology and innovation if your teams don’t have the knowledge to take advantage of it.
And we recognise individual and team achievements through our Shining Stars programme because a “thank-you” is a small gesture with massive impact.

Social value

For us, social value is a natural extension of sustainability. Sustainability, not just in terms of environment and CO2 emissions but also in in the sense of operating a sustainable business model that respects our people and engages with the communities in which we work.

With contracts all over the UK, we have an active programme of local charitable engagement, investing in projects and fundraising.