Dear readers,
we are thrilled to present the first Sustainability Report of Markas Group, a milestone on our journey towards the Markas 2030 Strategy and the beginning of a new phase during which our goal is to increasingly enhance our open and inclusive approach to stakeholder plurality.
With our trademark transparency, we have made a clear commitment to communicate our impact – both positive and negative – in a simple and effective manner, working towards a conscious and integrated management of social, environmental and governance aspects.
On this website, you will find an overview of the initiatives we are promoting and that are part of the ambitious 2022-2025 Markas Sustainability Plan. This Report stems from the strategic definition of sustainability priorities for the Group and from the identification of the projects we can pursue to actively contribute, with our resources, to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations 2030 Agenda and the 2015 Paris Agreement. We wanted to start precisely from the strategy that would enable us to understand where we can improve and how we can build – together with our stakeholders – the path for the gradual and deep integration of sustainability within our business model and the services we offer.
In 2022, among our key social achievements, we launched major initiatives to motivate and engage our employees. In Italy, the employee satisfaction survey was the first step to get a clear idea of the internal experiences of our employees and to define and launch effective projects to improve their well-being. One of the initiatives inspired by the climate survey is the MarkasXvoi (Markas for You) project: an initiative aimed at being closer to our staff who carry out their day-to-day work at our clients’ premises, and a way to make everyone feel part of the same team. Another key initiative was Markas Ideas, an important challenge launched by Markas to all the employees of the Group, through which they had the opportunity to propose new ideas and innovative solutions to improve the working environment and encourage collaboration between Markas offices, workers based in our clients’ premises, and countries. In Austria, our focus has been on the integration of people with disabilities through the Inclusive Working project.
Another important focus of our work is environmental sustainability. We have, in fact, taken various actions in this regard with the aim of improving efficiency. These include obtaining the EU Ecolabel for cleaning services, which earned us the 2022 EU Ecolabel Award, a prestigious recognition given out by ISPRA (Italian Institute for Environmental Protection and Research). We have also continued our commitment to reducing the environmental impact of our services by updating of the Carbon Footprint Systematic Approach, a tool that allows us to calculate the emissions of the cleaning service in terms of CO2 production, as well as to develop compensatory measures. This commitment also extends to the collaboration with our external stakeholders: in 2022, we worked together with the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in the Students & Company Sprint initiative to rethink and evolve our catering service from a circular economy perspective.
While on the one hand our energy and desire to do things have never wavered, the challenges characterising this historical period are loud and clear. As a Company, we have had to face a number of challenges: from high energy costs to the difficulty of finding qualified personnel and the rising inflation. In order to safeguard our corporate soundness, we made the strategic decision to focus even more on efficiency and innovation, prioritising projects that aim to standardise processes and improve collaboration, including through digitisation, as defined within our Sustainability Plan.
In all this, we will never lose sight of our more than 11,000 employees: our unique cultural diversity is, in fact, made up of more than 90 nationalities, something that fills us with a great sense of pride. I would like to thank our employees most sincerely: without their constant commitment, we would not be able to guarantee our customers the quality standards that we have always held dear.
We want to continue to grow recognising and enhancing the value of our employees, improving their working environment and, consequently, the communities in which we operate.
Christoph Kasslatter
Managing Director