Regenerative HR

We asked ourselves:

How can PeopleEX use HR to support businesses to become more sustainable?

Enter our new Regenerative HR service - working with organisations from the inside-out to restore and rebuild towards a more inclusive, just and sustainable way of doing things.

HR and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals = Regenerative HR

All workplaces have a responsibility to help create a more sustainable and fairer world. HR can help drive this change within an organisation.

Regenerative HR uses HR principles and products to regenerate the systems in which an organisation already operates and beyond. It's about growing employees into empowered people inspired to serve an organisation's greater vision and work with a sustainable mindset. We do this by connecting to an organisation’s purpose and making links to day-to-day people activities that can support sustainability action.

The UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) provide a helpful compass for HR professionals to assess and understand how an organisation can help create a more sustainable and fairer world.

The SDGs are 17 interconnected goals covering various topics such as climate change, gender equality and wellbeing. They are a global call for action to promote prosperity while protecting the planet. We have put the SDGs at the core of our Regenerative HR service.

Within the workplace, we know that people are the force that can propel an organisation forward towards meeting the SDGs. Inspired people equals an inspired organisation (not the other way around).

What is Regenerative HR?

How we can help you -
Regenerative HR in action

Get in touch

Regenerative HR is about making the SDGs tangible by embedding them into an organisation's people and culture. Using our training, HR and culture experience, and the SDGs as a framework, here's how we can help.

The SDGs encourage us all to take action. Within the workplace, we drive a behaviour-centred approach that helps our clients create positive change from the inside-out, encouraging their people to work, act and live more sustainably.

Our many years of HR experience have allowed us to understand where a sustainable and regenerative focus can be attached to the day-to-day people operations within an organisation. We’re excited to bring this understanding to our clients and help cultivate sustainable workplaces through our Regenerative HR service. People for Better is why we exist.

Sustainability as a mindset

Using our culture strategy experience, HR background, and coaching and sustainability training, we work from the top-down and inside-out to make sustainability a vital part of an organisation's culture and mindset.

HR Policy

We help link HR policy to the SDGs. For example, to honour SDG 5 (Gender equality), we can help organisations formulate a pay equity approach, promise and commitment. We also work with clients to ensure connection points to the SDGs throughout the employment lifecycle.

Performance development

We are experienced in setting sustainability and wellbeing performance goals where SDG effort is recognised and rewarded.

Position descriptions

We help organisations incorporate sustainability responsibility into position descriptions so all people in the workplace have an active role in meeting the SDGs.

Capability framework

We work with organisations to design the core capability attributes which set in stone the expected behaviours and actions for a sustainability focus across your entire workforce.

Recruitment and onboarding

We help organisations test for values alignment and a sustainability focus through the recruitment stage and find inherent links in the onboarding process to where your business is making an impact.

What we are doing at PeopleEX

Organisational learning and training

In 2022 PeopleEX joined the Sustainable Business Network as an Impact Investor to support their sustainability learning. Founded in 2002, the Sustainable Business Network is the largest organisation dedicated to sustainable business in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Our associate, Karen Meredith, has recently completed a certification in Business Sustainability Management through the University of Cambridge's Institute for Sustainability Leadership. Using her human resources background and this certification, Karen better understands the importance of leveraging an organisation's people to drive a sustainable and regenerative focus.

Organisational action

As a team, we took the SDG’s and its 169 targets and reviewed them to look for the specific targets where PeopleEX could make a logical, achievable, sustainable and targeted (LAST) impact. Here are just a few. Full details can be found in our LAST strategy.

SDG 5 (Gender equality) – The UN states, ‘In 2019, women only held 28% of managerial positions worldwide’. We are proudly a female-led and run business (all working mums).
SDG 13 (Climate action) – We operate a flexible work-from-home model resulting in a lower carbon output (we estimate that we use 16.36 kg (CO2e)per $1k of revenue using the carbon assess calculator from Toitū). We communicate via video conference, but on the rare occasion we fly, we FlyNeurtral. Over the next 3 years, we aim to achieve nationally recognised certifications for our footprint.

We are a small business, and whilst our bread and butter (and love) is human resources, we also know that we have a role to play in operating with a more sustainable and regenerative focus.

Enter our LAST strategy. Our logical, achievable, sustainable and targeted (LAST) strategy was designed by the people of PeopleEX and sets us on a course of action that is aligned with our vision and size.

We have put the SDGs at the core of this LAST strategy, using the framework to guide our actions and intentions - both internally and for our clients.

You can download our LAST Strategy here.
It outlines in more detail our two-fold approach:

Our Partners

The 17th and final Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) is about partnerships, highlighting the need for cross-sector collaboration to achieve the SDGs by 2030.

SDG 17 aligns perfectly with why we exist – People for Better. We’re here to connect and work in partnership with your people to stimulate better business growth, better social and environmental outcomes, and better people and customer experiences. And, when required, we bring in business partners who are experts in their field to help us do just that.

We are building to LAST.

Introducing our LAST Strategy.

Our current partners include:

Velocite

SDG 8 / 9 - Decent work and economic growth / Industry, innovation and infrastructure

The team at Velocite are business growth advisors committed to enabling the success of SMEs across regional New Zealand. They specialise in business growth, strategy, purpose and performance improvement. The UN states, 'Sustained and inclusive economic growth can drive progress, create decent jobs for all and improve living standards'. If our clients need guidance on growth strategy, we partner with Velocite.

Visit velocite.co.nz.

IMPAC

SDG 3 - Good health and wellbeing

IMPAC are New Zealand’s leading provider of health and safety solutions. Their focus is, and always will be, to get everyone home from work to their loved ones - safe and well. Health, safety and wellbeing are essential to sustainable development. If our clients need guidance on health and safety best practices, we partner with IMPAC.