We are GOLD - Brightwayz Gains Excellent Modeshift STARS Accreditation
We are GOLD! Here at Brightwayz we are very proud to have achieved the ‘excellent’ Modeshift STARS accreditation for our staff and premises - also known as ‘Modeshift STARS Gold’. So we are keen to share our ‘gold’ story to hopefully inspire others too.
Most of our time and effort is spent on supporting all our customers - councils, schools and other organisations - with their campaigns and initiatives to encourage and enable more active, sustainable travel habits and reduce car dependency. We’ve supported several of our local project and consultancy clients to achieve their own Modeshift STARS accreditation… but also felt we should ‘practice what we preach’ and do the same with our own team.
Reducing Carbon Emissions
So what did we do to achieve our Gold award? A key part was to demonstrate that we have reduced car travel for staff coming to our workplace. This has been achieved gradually over the last few years. Our recruitment policy has helped lead to an 84% decrease in carbon emissions from commuting to work since 2019 and our ‘usual mode of travel to work’ for staff now is zero car use. Even though we are now based in a village, two of our staff usually cycle in from nearby Kettering and others have a short walk from within the village. A working from home option has enabled our full team to reduce their impact of travel to work.
Play Streets and Wombling
There were lots of fun activities too which helped us gain the award. Involving our whole team in supporting a trial ‘school play street’ with a local school got us all out from our desks. Even our team members who don’t usually work directly on local active travel projects had a chance to get involved, managing the road closure barriers. Our director Lance also played his part as a Womble for another local event: ‘Walk to school with the Wombles’.
Activities such as these - where we connect with and support fun active travel events in our local community also were a great ‘team building’ opportunity for our staff.
National Schemes
We are keen to support the schemes initiated by other organisations too. For example we supported the Sustrans Big Pedal by providing two of their prizes - a scooterpod and ‘active travel to school rewards pack’.
‘Walk This Way’ got our team very competitive with taking photos of walks we did for this initiative led by Living Streets, the charity for everyday walking.
Managing Your Travel Plan
Our colleague Andrea has kept us all on track with regular active travel events and maintains our Active Travel noticeboard. Having a dedicated member of staff to oversee this as well as the support of all the directors and wider team is also key to success with Modeshift STARS.
We hope this has inspired you to look at your own workplace and work towards your own STARS accreditation. For more information on STARS see the Modeshift website.
Check out our range of Brightwayz engaging products and resources to support your travel plan.
