Aligning Around A Common Purpose

Objectives

Through the support of Meat and Poultry Ontario’s Canadian Agricultural Partnership Program, Yorkshire Valley Farms (YVF) was looking to define their organizational purpose, vision, and develop a purpose-driven growth strategy to achieve their sustainability and circularity goals.

Project

Services

Through alignment around their Purpose to “make food matter more” and Vision “to be part of a stable, fair, and thriving food system”, YVF has achieved the following:

• Completed two surveys of an Organization Health Index so that employees could feel heard and valued as demonstrated by improvements in engagement scores.
• Created a Director of Corporate Culture role, as the organization began to recognize the importance of human capital in their circularity and sustainability strategy.
• Began process to introduce employee benefits such as parental leave and a Registered Retirement Savings Plan (RRSP) program.
• Empowered employees to be part of the operational assessment work with our partners at Enviro-Stewards.
• Became more circular in the following areas: packaging, water usage, and waste.

Impacts

• Created a goal to achieve a 10% reduction in freshwater usage, and made changes to packaging to improve recycling compatibility.
• Organizational Health Index (OHI) score report from September 2021 to 2022 increased by 0.22 points, a 5.6% improvement, allowing Yorkshire Valley Farms to progress in its goals to achieve a regenerative culture.
• Through employee empowerment, effective communication, and additional investment made in smart meter technology, the team was able to take ownership and troubleshoot a spike in water consumption, leading to an 18% reduction by the next month in freshwater usage.
• Purpose-driven Instagram creative received 3.4x more engagement than a similar creative with functional messaging (as measured by ad clicks).

These achievements have resulted in enhanced employee enrollment and engagement, a refined business strategy through the lens of circularity, and engaged customers through purpose-driven communications.