Julian Tranter, managing director of waste management specialist Tom White, explains why defining and embracing clear corporate values has been a breakthrough for the business – a key driver of growth and profitability.
When you take on a leadership role, you find out pretty quickly what is and isn’t working – making incremental changes to perfect processes and optimise operations. However, it takes a true pioneer to immediately make radical corporate reform.
When I joined Tom White, it was clear to see that the business had a plan, a strategy and a pedigree, having operated as a skip hire and waste management business for more than 40 years. So why change? Why upset the status quo? Why rock the boat?
Well, many businesses tend to play it safe. They stick to the model that has worked well in the past for them. However, in the words of Henry Ford, “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.” I knew that the business had major potential and could revolutionise the industry. To do so, however, would require a completely different mindset.
The bigger vision was to differentiate the business through our key values – not our service offer. We didn’t want to compete with the wider market, we wanted to carve out a different path and create a business build on robust, honest, ethical values.
We had to really believe in those values and they had to underpin everything we did – paying lip-service was not an option. I wanted radical, fast-moving change that ultimately made a real difference to people.
Our values
In establishing our three core values, we looked at what we did, why we did it and who we did it for. We questioned our purpose, our identity and asked ourselves some really challenging questions.
At the end of the process, our values became clear:
- People first
- Protect the planet
- Profit for a purpose
Today, every single thing that we do is inherently driven by those core values. People are our priority. We provide a diverse and nurturing work culture, championing our team’s growth and progression. Tom White aims to be a ‘sticky’ company that retains good people – and one that people actually want to come and work for. Our people first value also extends to our customers. We really listen to their requirements, developing a strategy to better support their needs and achieve their environmental and social goals.
One of the first things I did after joining Tom White was to stop the export of waste outside of the UK. This is a pretty unique approach and one that clashes with most of our competitors. However, in order to protect the planet, I believe that we need to take responsibility – and this means recycling and reprocessing our own waste, rather than shipping it elsewhere.
What’s more, we’ve invested in new waste-to-product processes and we continue to reduce our carbon footprint. We do all of this because we want to – not because we have to!
Tom White also operate a profit for purpose model, whereby any profit we make is channelled directly back into the communities we serve including education, health services and community projects. As we continue to grow and expand, so does our commitment to those causes. This, again, is completely unique within the waste management sector. It’s all about creating value for the local community, not making profit for shareholders.
Taking ownership
In business we all have a corporate social responsibility, but for many this is a tick box. For us, it is absolutely fundamental to who we are. We have taken ownership of it and made it key to our success.
We are now moving very differently from the rest of the industry and running our business based on values, rather than our service provision. I completely understand the pressures that others face to drive commercial value, but ironically we’ve seen that, by proactively shifting our ethos, customer satisfaction has increased, staff retention has increased and importantly commercial partnerships are flourishing.
Delivering tomorrow today
There is a lot of target setting without much action in modern business. At Tom White, we’ve got on with it and made it happen. We are proud to be leading the waste management market and demonstrating to the industry that a different way of thinking can work commercially.
I’m committed to staying true to those important values we’ve set out. Following through with change, putting people and planet first and using our profits in the right way to create a better world for everyone. This is now a proven formula of commercial success in the industry for others to follow and we’d take great pride in that if they did.
