Organisational development
Kilbirnie & Lyall Bay. Image – Cissy Pan.
Landcare Research has continued efforts to develop as a good employer delivering excellent science while minimising its environmental footprint. Sustainability is the thread that knits everything into a vibrant, dynamic organisation that staff are proud to work for.
In deciding strategic initiatives for the year, we balance economic, environmental, social and cultural factors. Key focus areas this year have been: Highlights for the year are reported below – more detail can be found on our website where we report a comprehensive set of performance indicators.
- Reinforcing our high performing workforce through training and development, rewards, and by recruiting excellent employees
- Continuing our development of ‘smarter systems’ that simplify administration and facilitate staff working across teams while reducing our environmental footprint by incorporating sustainability goals into operational activities such as travel
- Refurbishing our properties using sustainable materials and retrofitting with technologies to ensure greater energy– and water–efficiency, and improved waste management Landcare Research total remuneration is generally higher than both the CRI and science sector medians
Our people
Planning for our future
Over the past year, Landcare Research implemented a number of future–focused initiatives to ensure our workforce has the capabilities required in the long term. They included a leadership and management development programme for middle and senior managers, and the adoption of workforce planning to enable us to proactively shape and recruit the skills, knowledge and attributes needed to take us into the future. Our workforce is multinational with 40% of staff originating from outside New Zealand. Last year, about one–third of new science staff were recruited from overseas despite the increasingly competitive international marketplace. Turnover across all staff was 10%, compared with 15.2% in the previous year.
Good employer
We endeavour to provide all staff with comprehensive guidelines, training, mentoring and support to ensure their well–being in the office and field. Staff and our union (the PSA) have input through site Health & Safety committees. We are part of the Accident Compensation Commission’s programme for Workplace Safety Management Practices, and our level of achievement is assessed annually. We retained our Tertiary Accreditation, the highest level, reflecting our best practice framework and culture of continuous improvement. During the year, no Health & Safety incidents resulted in an absence of more than one week (average lost time was 16 .4 hours).
Socially responsible
Nearly 75% of our staff are part of Landcare Research–supported superannuation, student loan repayment and KiwiSaver schemes – a 58% increase on the previous year. We are committed to supporting the State Services Commission’s Mainstream programme, which provides opportunities for people with disabilities; five employees on this programme worked with us last year.
Our bicultural toolbox (resources available on our Staffroom intranet) was updated during the year, and Te Reo Māori tuition is available at some sites. We maintain a confidential employee assistance programme to help staff whose work may be impaired by family, personal or work circumstances; this year 21 staff used this service, mostly for personal issues.
We support initiatives in local communities such as Lincoln Envirotown, BioBlitz (North Shore City this year) and the Hot Science with Kim Hill series of public debates in Christchurch. Staff give talks to primary schools (more than 20 this year) with spiders, insects and lizards being the most popular topics.
Our environment
Solid waste and water
Last year, we achieved a 54% reduction per FTE (12.78 kg down from 23.47 kg) in avoidable waste to landfill. This was achieved through a combination of removing all office wastepaper bins and concerted efforts to raise awareness by our site sustainability groups. Our target for next year is a further 10% reduction.
More than 30 operational PCs were donated to other organisations; 90% of the remaining waste IT equipment went to recycling organisations in New Zealand.
Water meters were installed at our six major sites and baseline data recorded for consumption of potable water. Our target for next year is to reduce consumption by 10%. Following the success of rainwater–harvesting features at our Auckland site, the refurbishment of Sirtrack’s building at Havelock North included a system to collect rainwater for use in flushing toilets and irrigation.
Procurement
Landcare Research is a participant in the Govt3 programme led by the Ministry for the Environment (MfE). The most material procurement issues for us relate to office refurbishments, IT equipment and general consumables, particularly paper. For printed stationery we use 100% post–consumer recycled, chlorine–free paper that is produced by Mohawk with energy derived from wind–power. For general–purpose copying and printing office papers, we used 80% recycled paper manufactured in Australia; from 1 July 2008, we will have moved to 100% recycled Australian paper. We continued to recycle more paper (13.7 tonnes) than we purchased (9.2 tonnes).
Our preferred IT supplier is Hewlett–Packard because of its sustainability performance and reporting.
Building refurbishments incorporate materials such as Interface carpet tiles, and a move to open–plan offices that are more space and carbon efficient than traditional layouts.
Energy
Our goal is to reduce energy consumption overall and increase the portion of electricity sourced from renewable supplies. This year, 47% (43.32% in 2006/07) of all energy purchased was renewable electricity from carboNZeroCertTM–certified Meridian Energy, with the target at 55% (70% of all electricity). Compared with 2006/07, total energy use across the company increased by 4%, but per FTE it decreased by 2%. Our target for next year is a reduction of 10% per FTE.
Grants totalling $11,800 from the Energy Efficiency and Conservation Authority (EECA) enabled us to install solar water heating at Hamilton, Palmerston North, Lincoln (Godley Building plus an additional panel on the Fleming building) and Dunedin. EECA will also be working with us on an implementation plan for other energy–saving initiatives identified this year by an energy audit at our Lincoln site and the Building Management System Audit at our Auckland site. Our target is to reduce energy use by at least 5% at these two sites.
Greenhouse gas emissions
Each year, we impute our CO2 emissions from all our travel and energy use across all sites, and purchase carbon credits to take us to a carbon–neutral position for the year. Domestic and international air travel, overall and per FTE, decreased slightly from the previous year but is still responsible for more than half our total greenhouse gas emissions.
Our total imputed CO2 emissions were 2389 tonnes – the significant increase from the previous year being predominantly due to new emission factors for air travel. The new emission factor of 1.9 takes into account oxides of nitrogen and water vapour produced during flight; the previous factor of 1 only included CO2 emissions. Our supplier of renewable electricity (Meridian Energy) offset 380 tonnes and we purchased 2010 carbon credits to make us carbon neutral for the 2007/08 year. Last year, our subsidiary Sirtrack began measuring CO2 emissions (63.5 tonnes) and purchased 35 tonnes of carbon credits to begin offsetting its emissions.
Landcare Research and Sirtrack purchased all the EBEX21 credits available (472 credits from Coatbridge in Marlborough and Hinewai Reserve on Banks Peninsula) with the rest coming from landfi ll (690 credits) and wind farms (883 credits).
ISO 14001
Our Environmental Management System was audited by Telarc and we retained our ISO 14001 certification. To quote the report:
The system as currently operating is extremely well managed and the organisation is to be complemented on the manner in which it has been implemented. One very pleasing note is that Landcare Research is not only wishing to comply with current Resource Management requirements, but is also implementing some very innovative systems to further improve its approach to environmental issues. Examples of this are the calculation of CO2 emissions and the investigation of further alterations to existing buildings to provide a more eco–friendly environment.