Our annual performance review

An overview of our performance and key indicators.

OUR ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REVIEW

As our first sustainability report, this section reviews our performance in some key areas, as well as setting out intentions for improvements going forward.

Our sustainability strategy is a work-in-progress, and we have only recently begun to centralise our Environment, Social and Governance reporting.

We are proud of our many achievements in these areas and look forward to expanding and enhancing a coordinated program of initiatives on which we can communicate progress over the coming years.

Environment

We are using our 2019 carbon data as the baseline for future targets, and for assessing the significance of the impact from the various categories of emissions.

This is because our emissions, especially those that fall within Scope 3 such as business travel, were heavily influenced by the restrictions imposed as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021.

SCOPE 1

Direct emissions from company owned vehicles and equipment

As an office based professional services company who lease property, our Scope 1 emissions come from a small number of company cars. Where these were previously all petrol/diesel internal combustion engine cars, half have been exchanged for hybrid electric vehicles over the last 2 years.

SCOPE 2

Indirect emissions from purchased electricity

Our scope 2 emissions have decreased due to Covid-19 and our offices being closed. Our head office property management company is a BCorp who supply us with renewable electricity. In the coming year, we will engage with the landlords in all of our global locations, aiming to influence a change to a renewable energy supplier wherever possible.

SCOPE 3

Indirect GHG emissions as a result of business activities, from upstream and downstream sources not owned or controlled by the company

OPERATIONS

Our emissions from business operations are dominated by our business travel, which accounted for 86% of our baseline Scope 3 emissions in 2019, before decreasing heavily as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. Our commitment going forward is that we will not exceed this 2019 base level for absolute emissions from business travel. We will also start to measure the emission factor of our hotel, air and rail travel in kgCO2e/FTE, and intend to reduce this metric by 50% by 2035.

Governance

Our commitment to quality management systems resulted in our continued ISO certifications in 2021 as well as our first Ecovadis award at Bronze level. We will concentrate on making improvements as indicated by these audits.

In 2020 and 2021, we ensured that we completed due diligence on all of our potential suppliers, and 100% of those approved confirmed they would adhere to our Supplier Operating Principles (SOPs). 100% of suppliers have received Corporate Governance & Quality due diligence, which covers: Equal Opportunities, Diversity, Anti-Bribery & Anti-Corruption, Modern Slavery and Child Labour, Ethical Business Practices / Corporate Social Responsibility. 41% of suppliers onboarded in 2021 had significant environmental impacts that required them to go through our environmental due diligence. All were approved having met or exceeded our minimum standards. In 2022, we will review the assessment and feedback from Ecovadis to help inform us on incorporating stronger sustainability requirements into these procurement processes.

In 2021, we added a 9th mandatory module on ‘Information Security Awareness’ to our comprehensive set of Ethics, Security, Quality and Business Continuity training programs which everyone in the business must complete.

OUR PEOPLE

We now have a significant number of homeworkers particularly in the UK. The emissions from this category of Scope 3 will be footprinted in the coming year, along with employee commutes. A program of education and engagement initiatives will be designed with appropriate targets and KPIs set out in order to track their impact.

UPSTREAM

Engaging our suppliers and partners

In addition to the environmental commitments we require as a part of our Supplier & Partner Operating Principles, this year we will expand our carbon footprinting to include measurement of carbon emissions from all of our suppliers and partners with significant environmental impacts. This will account for the portion of their Scope 1 & 2 emissions which can be related to our business activities together, and the results will inform our approach to working with them on reduction strategies.

DOWNSTREAM

Influencing our clients

In the last year, as well as implementing a suite of sustainability enhancements for our clients we have formed some important strategic partnerships. We have ambitious plans for further developing our technology, encouraging more clients to green their travel programs and for introducing them to impactful carbon reduction and mitigation solutions. Our goal in providing this range of products and services is to support our clients in pursuit of their own CO2 reduction targets.

We plan to monitor our progress starting with KPIs to measure our engagement with clients on the topic of sustainability, whether in the form of consultancy or marketing activities. We will also track the volume of CO2 emissions we have assisted clients in avoiding, reducing or mitigating through our use of our services or partners such as Neste and ClimateCare.

SOCIAL

In 2022, we will look to encourage all of our people to take part in our Day-for-a-Day policy. This allows a day of paid leave each year, on which we can each choose a volunteer project to take part in.

Our charitable giving is also going to be reviewed in all of our global locations this year. We want to ensure that our people are contributing to organisations that they feel connected to and are truly passionate about supporting.

Diversity and inclusion will be a main focus for our HR department in 2022, having recently identified several key objectives which will help us improve in this area. We will ensure that we can report on diversity by tracking minority group statistics and gender balance throughout the business. Targets and KPIs are currently under consideration, but plans have already been made for the delivery of discrimination and harassment awareness training to all of our people.

As a result of targeted leadership development training, we saw the % of women in top executive positions increase by 7% from 2020 to 2021. In our latest UK Gender Pay Gap report 2020-2021, we saw that women earn 85p to the £1, compared to men. Our aim is to bring this to parity although our remuneration model for some roles means that full control of this metric is challenging to manage.

Due both to our strong policies on ethical matters and our extraordinary people in the section 'Key Sustainability Policies & Mandatory Training', we continue to have an exceptional record with relation to Ethical Related Attempts or Incidents and intend to continue this success into 2022 and beyond.