First Choice for the environment

Henrie Palmer of Epic client First Choice describes the part that learning plays in helping to fulfil the organisation's environmentally-responsible vision.

Like all companies, First Choice depends on environmental resources to operate. At First Choice we recognise that there is a limit to the pressures society can put on the environment. The First Choice Group has substantial business units in 17 countries across the world and runs an airline of 32 aircraft. Careful management of environmental resources is therefore central to the smooth running of the business.

Holiday destinations and the natural resources they depend on are finite, and as such must be protected. Leisure travel brings the pleasure of discovering new places and cultures to millions of people every year, as well as the potential for new jobs and revenue to local communities around the world. Our business depends on healthy relationships with local communities, and a clean and safe natural environment.

To minimise negative impact at our destinations customers are given access to information that explains how they can behave responsibly before, during and after their holiday. We also support key projects, such as those led by the Travel Foundation, where links are established between local suppliers and buyers to promote local products.

As well as considering the impact on our destinations we recognise we have an effect on the environment where we work in our home country. Within the Mainstream Holidays Sector we have therefore established an Environmental Management System.

Some of the key components of this system include:

Recycling

• Reducing paper consumed across the business and recycling waste paper, plastics and aluminium drink cans.
• Recycling of non-paper waste such as compact discs and fluorescent light tubes.
• Reducing the total number of brochures that we print, encouraging the use of electronic brochures and recycling out-of-date brochures.

Aircraft

First Choice operates a modern fleet of fuel-efficient aircraft. These aircraft fly with high load factors which means that fuel consumed per passenger kilometre is considerably less than scheduled services. Our pilots taxi the aircraft onto stand using only one engine to reduce fuel emissions and we have investigated the feasibility of retrofitting wingtip devises to our Boeing 767 aircraft to increase fuel efficiency.

We have recently selected the Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger jet, which is anticipated to reduce fuel consumption by 20%. The environmental credentials of the aircraft were a key factor in the decision to make this selection.

Employee Travel

Employees are encouraged to travel to work by walking, cycling or taking the train. Employees who drive are encouraged to register on the First Choice car pool to share their journeys to work.

E-learning

And yes, you knew that e-learning would be highlighted in this report somewhere!

First Choice employs approximately 14,000 people across the Group, of whom approximately 8,600 are based in the UK, 4,200 are in other developed countries across Europe, US and Canada, and the remainder is in countries in Africa, Asia, Australia and Eastern Europe. This disseminated workforce has a broad range of job roles including airline crews, overseas resort representatives, retail customer advisers, finance and IT.

Attracting, developing and retaining great people is critical to the sustainability of our business - providing easy-to-access training on compliance and legal requirements, while supporting personal development, is therefore vital to our success.

Our bases are often some distance apart, even in the UK: our Mainstream Head Office is at Gatwick Airport and the First Choice Airways Head Office is at Manchester Airport. E-learning has been recognised as an essential tool for delivering high quality, consistent training messages to a disseminated workforce with minimum impact on the environment.

• Delivering training as e-learning reduces the requirement for employees to travel to a training venue or for trainers to travel to employees.
• E-learning provides an easy to access delivery tool without the need to print workbooks or handouts.
• Electronic delivery allows us to amend and deliver without the requirement for reprints or the need to send updates to employees worldwide. Employees are notified of updates using the Intranet or e-mail.

Looking to the future, we are considering a wide range of electronic mechanisms to complement our current approach to e-learning, thus expanding the environmental benefits that electronic delivery can offer.

If you are interested in finding out more about the approach First Choice has to the Environment and People, please visit our website: www.fcenvironmentandpeople.com