Our Sustainability

Walking the talk

We are committed to demonstrating our own sustainability to the highest standard, ensuring we are walking the talk and experiencing first-hand the practicalities of implementing sustainability.  This gives us credibility, empathy and authenticity when working with our clients on their own sustainability.

We are a Certified B Corporation, which recognises our commitment to being a purpose-lead organsiation creating a positive impact for workers, customers, suppliers, community, and our environment.

Our purpose, vision and mission

Our Purpose is to ‘Balance today, to maximise tomorrow’. This filters through all our business practices, how we treat our people, our approach to clients and the world around us.  Our Vision is ‘Equitable outcomes for nature and society’ which will be delivered by ‘Empowering organisations and collaborating to achieve sustainability’ (our Mission). We value Quality: quality relationships, quality work and quality culture.

Our strategy

We have built our strategy on the material issues that matter the most to our business. Our strategy has three core areas we are seeking to create impact: Kaitiakitanga, Manaakitanga and Taurikura. Our nine strategic goals provide focus and practice to enable us to deliver this impact.

Our progress

We have established our own emissions profile and targets in line with limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees above preindustrial temperatures and have made demonstrable progress with a 36% reduction in our greenhouse gas emissions on base year (FY24 vs FY20).

As a small business, we are able to scrutinise each and every one of our key suppliers, and selectively work with those organisations that understand and address environmental, social and governance (ESG) risks and opportunities.  In choosing a supplier, we review them against a range of ESG factors, including governance, ethics, health and safety, human rights, labour practices and modern slavery, environmental stewardship and social procurement practices, including working with indigenous suppliers. 

We are focused on ensuring our people wrap work around their life, not the other way around.  This means putting health, wellbeing and family at the heart of our operation and ensuring Oxygen is nurturing people to grow and develop as individuals and professionals.

We are selective about the clients we work with and will not work with any organisations who are in known high risk and/or sensitive sectors including: weapons and munitions, tobacco, thermal coal extraction, oil and gas exploration and production, and gambling.

By considered community investment, we are able to magnify our sustainable approach and achieve a wider and longer-term impact.  Through Ko tatou te taio - our community investment framework - we seek partnerships that will create a positive impact for both environment and society today, enabling a better tomorrow. We believe that human health and planetary health are interlinked and cannot be address in silo, so our approach to addressing these issues is focused on partnerships that will achieve more than one outcome for people and planet. We also recognise that climate change is the number one environmental challenge the world is facing in the immediate and long term and that we all have a part to play to address this meaningfully and at the pace and scale that is required, therefore all our partnerships have a common goal in making a meaningful impact on climate change. In FY24, our community investment amounted to 10% pre tax profit.

We uphold the principles of Te Tiriti o Waitangi and respect the values of partnership, protection, participation in our approach to doing business.  We draw from mātauranga (Māori knowledge) to enhance our understanding of the systemic connection between people and nature and how this can improve the way in which sustainability is addressed.

The bar for excellence in sustainability is constantly rising, so our focus is on continuous improvement, both as an organisation, our capability and in the services we offer.  While our professional memberships and training enable us to evolve, we welcome our clients’ feedback on how we can continue to grow and shape our services to meet their changing needs. We are proud of the caliber and quality of our services, and our NPS score of 66.7 gives us reassurance we are hitting the mark for our clients.