H. Porter & Sons’ staff benefit from a weekly fruit box delivery. This helps us to cut down on packaging and wrapping and encourages healthy eating. It also eases our team’s weekly food spend outside of work.

We’re extremely proud of the fact that much of our work to take care of the planet has been led by our fantastic staff. During annual reviews, employees are asked to put forward ideas about how they can be more sustainable in their role. As a result, we now use recycled paper envelopes, only print when necessary and prioritise email communication. We’ve also adopted greener cleaning products supplied by a local refill company. Thanks to staff suggestions, we’re currently looking into a wider range of coffins and caskets that produce lower emissions when cremated, or which do not cause harmful pollution to the soil when buried. We are delighted to now offer the ‘Cyclescheme’ bike purchasing initiative to all of our team, who pay nothing upfront. The payments are taken tax efficiently from their salary. This passes on a wealth of savings, and encourages sustainable transport all in one.

Training and career development support is a constant presence within our business. As well as mandatory role related training, we offer a wide range of courses to those who have an interest or want to develop a different skill set. Staff are also supported in non role-related training, be that learning a new language, cookery, beauty or pretty much anything else they fancy. We fully fund all staff training. The owner of H. Porter & Sons, Lucy Porter, has a keen interest in everything sustainable and in 2023 joined Green Advantage – Skills Bootcamp in Sustainability, delivered by the Aston Centre for Growth in partnership with The Energy & Bioproducts Research Institute (EBRI) and the Centre for Circular Economy and Advanced Sustainability at Aston University.

Benefits for staff are wide-ranging, some have been covered under other topics, but in a nutshell, we also offer matching pension contributions, access to a financial advisor, free eye tests and contributions towards glasses needed for work. We provide mental health support, counselling, team meals and events – and ‘emergency’ snacks. Because who doesn’t need an emergency snack sometimes? Our snacks all come from ethical B Corp companies too. We ensure flexibility for medical and parental leave along with a whole host of other things designed to help our team feel valued, respected and supported.

We recruit without bias. This means that we pledge to give equal consideration to all applicants, regardless of background, culture, religion, gender, sexual orientation and neurodiversity. We practise and are working on a policy which:

  • Removes gendered wording
  • Makes data-driven decisions
  • Advertises roles through new channels
  • Makes our interview process structured
  • Has an interview panel.