2023 Retrospective, 2024 Futurespective!

As another great year comes to a close, we look with gratitude, through slightly tired eyes, at everything we’ve achieved in 2023, and forward to what we hope to achieve in the year to come!

Without doubt, 2023 has been a fantastic year for CGBC and without sounding cliched, we couldn’t have done it without all the stellar support.

To our amazing and incredibly loyal clients and partners, a HUGE thank you for giving us your trust, sharing your vision for the future with us, and allowing us to work so closely with you and your teams. It’s been our pleasure.

To our fantastic TEAM here at CGBC - what can we say only we couldn’t have done it without each and every one of you. Three cheers, hip, hip!

Milestones & Achievements

2023 has been more than just a box ticking exercise here at CGBC HQ. It’s been a year when as a unit we have pulled together more than ever to realise so many long held dreams and achieved so many items on the wish-list.

Customer-led Increase in Services: in response to growing customer demand, this year has seen CGBC expand its footprint in disciplines such as Energy Audits, ISO 50001 service offerings and Carbon Footprinting, all of which have become staples of our growing portfolio of ISO-driven services;

Ramping up Employee Numbers: in the past twelve months, CGBC has doubled the number of its employees to 16, with plans to expand upwards to 30 staff by the end of 2024;

Office expansion: We were excited to open up a new Spanish Office with our sustainability manager Julia Municio.

Organisational Growth: this year our CEO Caroline Geoghegan completed the Enterprise Ireland Leadership 4 Growth programme aimed at equipping business leaders with the knowledge and tools they need to grow their business and expand into new markets. CGBC is now prepped and ready for phase two of our expansion plan, which is set to kick off in early 2024;

Our Values & Culture: as our plans for growth began to take shape we took the opportunity to re-evaluate and realign of Values & Culture; as we scale it incredibly important to us that we don’t lose sight of those things which have been fundamental to how we do things whilst also adapting culturally to meet the changes that growth will bring to us as a team; for 2024 our core values will be:

• Customer First
• Committed to Sustainability
• Delivering Real Results for our Clients
  
• Integrity & Transparency

2023 Wasn’t Without its Challenges

This year hasn’t been without its challenges and none more so than those posed by the introduction of the EU’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD). Not only did we ourselves have to up-skill in the requirements of the directive, we then had to develop and deliver a CSRD awareness programme for our clients, accompanying them on their journey to compliance and advising them on how the CSRD would impact each individual business.

Now as ever, our commitment to Sustainability is rock solid. At CGBC we walk the talk, aligning every strand of our business with CSR, and endeavouring to make meaningful strides towards complete sustainability.

To that end, in 2023 we:

• Installed an Electric Vehicle Charging Point for our staff fleet.
• Introduced initiatives to promote sustainable best practices across the organisation including advocating for carpooling, no print Fridays and switching to 100% recycled products;
• Significantly reduced our Paper Use in the drive to become a paperless office.
• As part of our keystone move towards becoming a sustainable business, CGBC developed a Carbon Footprint strategy to help us plan for Net Zero.

Looking ahead to 2024

The retrospective on 2023 done,

here’s a snapshot of our vision for 2024.

Global Expansion: one of our keystone objectives for 2024 is expanding into the UK and Spanish markets. Here goes - wish us luck!

Employee Wellbeing Programme: in January we will be ramping up our already established Employee Wellbeing programme, rolling out new initiatives aimed at fostering a culture of collaborations, open communications and inclusivity in our workplace.

B Corp Certification: to underpin our commitments to CSR, sustainability and transparency we have signed up to become B Corp certified which we hope to have achieved by the end of Q2 2024.

Great Place to Work: ours is a great place to work so, we have signed up for the official Great Place to Work scheme - we’ll keep you posted!

That’s it from our side. We know that many of your have similar plans in the pipeline for 2024 and wish you all the very best for them. Let’s checkpoint on those during the coming months! We look forward to sharing success stories and a few anecdotes along the way.

Once again, a massive thank you for your continued support in 2023 and here’s to a wonderful 2024. Merry Christmas from the team at CG Business Consulting.

Watch this space for a big announcement in 2024!