Beyondly Wins ESG Impact Award: 2025 Yorkshire Excellence in HR Awards
On 23 October 2025, Beyondly attended the 2025 Yorkshire Excellence in HR Awards at The Royal Armouries, Leeds. The event brings together the brightest minds and most innovative HR professionals to showcase their incredible contributions to the field and the pivotal role they play in shaping today’s modern workplace.
The awards have a wide range of categories which recognise individuals, teams and companies, including Rising Talent in HR, People Excellence in SMEs, and Purpose Beyond Profit… and we are delighted to announce that Beyondly are the winners of this year’s ESG Impact Award!
Eligibility
The ESG Impact Award acknowledges organisations that have incorporated Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) into their HR strategies, and demonstrated their commitment and achievements in the realm of ESG. In order to be considered, the Beyondly team gathered evidence to demonstrate our:
- Commitment to minimising the environmental impact of Beyondly’s business operations
- Development and implementation of programs that promote diversity, equity, and inclusion within the organisation and/or the promotion of social mobility
- Implementation and demonstration of robust governance structures that ensure accountability and ethical decision making
- Employee-driven ESG initiatives or involvement in community projects
- Clear reporting on ESG performance, goals, and outcomes, and the positive impact resulting from ESG initiatives
This evidence showcases how ESG is not just a framework at Beyondly, but a fundamental part of who we are and how we operate.
Net Zero by 2030
As a growing business with employee headcount almost doubling in the past 3 years, we have an ambitious target of becoming Net Zero by 2030. To further this journey, we have a commitment of planting 1 million trees and have planted 208,341 to date in our Beyondly Forest. This initiative not only offsets carbon emissions but also supports global biodiversity and community-led reforestation projects.
Reaching Net Zero will take continued collaboration, innovation, and accountability across every part of our business – from how we power our offices to how we engage our people and partners. With sustainability at the heart of our culture, we’re creating positive environmental impact that future generations can be proud of.
Implementation of ESG into our HR Strategy
Beyondly’s vision is to create a better, fairer, sustainable world for all, and we have always embedded environmental sustainability into everything we do. We are proud to have taken various actions to implement ESG into our HR Strategy, including the following:
- We retrofitted our new office with a ground-sourced heat pump to support our journey to Net Zero, cutting emissions by 13.4 tCO₂e annually.
- We introduced a car sharing policy whereby employees can claim their mileage expenses back at 45p per mile once per week when sharing with another member of staff. Following its introduction in February 2022, 2,362 miles were saved, corresponding to a saving of 0.65 tCO2e. Today, this initiative has contributed to further savings of 2.28 tCO2e in 2024, and an incredible 2.48 tCO2e so far in 2025 so far and a 36% uptake in employees getting involved in the initiative since its inception.
- As part of a six-month inclusion initiative, we removed qualification requirements from ‘essential’ criteria in job descriptions and updated adverts to welcome candidates from all backgrounds.
- Every employee receives one paid volunteering day each year. Over three years, staff have contributed 215+ hours to local and environmental causes, from tree planting to supporting community charities such as SELFA, Skipton Step Into Action, and YDMT.
- Through our annual Fund for Change programme, launched in 2022, we donate 5% of net profits each year to charities and CICs, supporting both social and environmental initiatives.
- We continue to drive ethical and environmental impact across our operations, including through the purchase of WEEE and Packaging Recycling Evidence (PRNs).
- Beyondly achieved B Corp certification in 2022 with a score of 85.7, and we now conduct our own annual scoring exercise to ensure continuous improvement.
- Our annual Business Impact evaluation tracks progress across volunteering, Fund for Change, wellbeing, and carbon reduction – achieving a 13% increase in our Impact Score from FY 2024 to FY 2025.
Looking ahead to future impact, the business has a target to increase our impact score by 48 points and achieve EcoVadis Gold by April 2026 which encompasses all areas of our ESG strategy across people, planet, and our company performance.
The Awards Ceremony
Beyondly’s Head of Sustainability and Principal Consultant, Liz Wood (MISEP CEnv MEI), and Sustainability Manager & Lead Consultant, Susanna Jackson (MISEP CEnv), attended the awards and were delighted to see Beyondly announced as the winner of the ESG Impact Award. Susanna commented, “Winning the ESG Impact Award is an incredible recognition of the culture we’ve built at Beyondly. We’ve always prioritised people and planet alongside profit, and achieving our B Corp certification embedded that ethos further. Employees at Beyondly have a genuine passion for creating positive impact, and our ESG strategy empowers them to make decisions and take collaborative action to make a difference.”
Summary
The ESG Impact recognition reflects how sustainability and social impact is embedded into our culture and employees and is a testament to the collaboration between HR and sustainability teams to integrate ESG into decision making. We are incredibly proud of this great achievement, but our efforts don’t stop here! Our unwavering commitment to continually striving for a better way has been key to our ESG success, and as we look ahead to the future, we remain focused on advancing our ESG strategy and driving meaningful, measurable impact across everything we do.
To find out more about Beyondly’s awards and achievements throughout the years, head to our Awards page.
Contributors: Susanna Jackson (MISEP CEnv), Liz Wood (MISEP CEnv MEI)
Source: https://yorkshirehrawards.co.uk/categories/
