Protecting our purpose
Our shared cultural beliefs, that we ask everyone to display, both protect our purpose and bring it to life.
For us, these are the values and behaviours that will ensure we deliver on our purpose, create a great place to work, and be a valued partner to our clients, suppliers and communities. To help us embed these cultural beliefs we have created a Culture Committee, with representative membership from our colleagues across the organisation. They will help us to shape the culture of the organisation, be a sounding board for changes within the business, and also be the voices of their colleagues. We encourage respectful challenge to ways of working where it is believed our practices can be improved to achieve our purpose.Authenticity & Respect
We are authentic and respect each other, focusing on trust and honesty. As a global organisation, we celebrate what makes each person unique and value equality and diversity – we encourage people to be themselves at work.
Pulling Together
We are recognised as an ethical and sustainable business, which has a common focus and purpose. We understand each other and pull together to manage our impact on the environment, our people and our communities, and in delivering for our clients.
Being Brave
We are brave and we will take on challenges and make difficult decisions to benefit all. We embrace change, innovation and the future - working at pace, and demonstrating resilience to get things done.
Delivering Results
We deliver results and we take personal and collective accountability to get the job done and then celebrate our successes as we grow the business. What we do creates value for all of us, our stakeholders and our clients.
We have chosen to focus on five key areas that we believe will help us to deliver the impact we want to see and make us a more sustainable business. Each of these five key areas have programmes and initiatives in place, with defined measures and objectives.
Operating
Responsibly
Inclusive &
Healthy
Workplaces
Tackling
Climate
Change &
Protecting
Nature
Responsible
Supply Chain
Strong &
Healthy
Communities
OPERATING RESPONSIBLY
Our approach to Responsible Business is embedded so that we always operate in an ethical and sustainable manner. From having the correct policies and processes in place, with a risk framework protecting our approach, our stakeholders can trust in how we work.
This focus area, as with all, intersects with each of the others, truly embedding Responsible Business practices into all that we do.
Communisis is proud to have obtained a Silver Medal for our most recent EcoVadis assessment, covering Labour & Human Rights, Ethics & Sustainable Procurement, Diversity and Environment. The assessment has highlighted areas of improvement and we are targeting further improvements in score.
The protection of Human Rights is fundamental to all that we do. Communisis has a zero-tolerance approach to forced, bonded or compulsory labour, human trafficking and other kinds of slavery.
Our Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking Policy covers employees, workers, contractors, agents and also the activities of its Suppliers. This is also supported by our Human Rights Policy, which articulates how we support and protect the UN Guiding Principles and ILO Conventions on Human Rights.
TACKLING CLIMATE CHANGE AND PROTECTING NATURE
We have formalised our commitment with the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi), publicly committing to putting targets in place that support a 1.5°C pathway to tackle climate change.
This is important for us to achieve our commitment of Carbon Net Zero for Scope 1 & 2 emissions by 2025 and be fully Net Zero by 2030.
We annually submit to The CDP (formerly the Carbon Disclosure Project) as a transparent means by which to share our performance, and we have a current B- rating; independently certifying our greenhouse gas emissions to ISO 14064-3 standards.
We are extremely proud to have achieved an A- for our Supplier Engagement Rating alongside our overall performance rating.
Helping us reach these goals, we developed ‘Green Up’. This allows us to measure the current sustainability of our products.
The baseline is used to make sustainability improvement recommendations, helping our clients to make more climate-conscious decisions and enable them to achieve their own goals in tackling climate change.
8%
Reduced Scope 1 emissions by a further 8% in 2021
16%
Reduced Scope 2 emissions by a further 16% in 2021
21%
Reduced waste by 21% in 2021
RESPONSIBLE SUPPLY CHAIN
Recognising our position within the supply chain, we know the importance of having supply partners that help us to achieve our ambitions, not just the work we do.
To support the work that we are doing, we also engage with key suppliers in undertaking EcoVadis assessments, support them on their journey and gain the benefits that Communisis does.
Understanding the lifecycle of our products and the emissions performance of a number of our suppliers has helped us to assess the impact of some key products. This provides valuable insight to further inform our approach.
We fully recognise the need and benefit of having diverse suppliers, and the importance it has in underpinning our sustainable performance.
Therefore, we have a number of programmes underway to promote and improve diversity within our supply chain, with a current focus on women-owned and led businesses.
Our supplier engagement programme developments create value along the whole supply chain.
INCLUSIVE AND HEALTHY WORKPLACE
Having a diverse and inclusive workforce where everyone can bring their whole self to work, in an environment where they can reach their potential, is vital to our shared success.
We actively listen to colleagues, implementing changes where needed to create a sense of belonging.
Our ‘About Me’ campaign asks that colleagues share what makes them unique, outlining how we will use this data to deliver on our commitments.
This has been the basis for some significant improvements in our organisation and removing potential barriers for all colleagues in recent months. This includes:
- Improving our Executive Board gender diversity to a position of equal representation with a gender split of 50:50
- Doubled our full paid maternity (from 6 weeks to 12 weeks)
- Created and launched a new mentoring platform to support career progression
- Developed our new Menopause Policy with colleague input
- Embraced new ways of working post-pandemic, designed to support all colleagues
- Continued to work collaboratively with colleagues, clients and third parties to focus our efforts and share best practice.
To support our work in this space we are pleased to have extended our partnership with DIAL Global – leaders in the diversity, inclusion, belonging and equality field – and who operate a global community where we can network, share and learn from leading practice.
50:50
Gender split at Exec board level
x2
Doubled our full pay maternity leave
STRONG HEALTHY COMMUNITIES
Communisis already has a strong track record of supporting charities with our successful volunteering day policy in place, to encourage local work with good causes at both a company and personal level.
The global pandemic curtailed much of our in-person volunteering, but we continued to support our communities and charity partners in a variety of ways.
We look forward to restrictions ending and our colleagues once again being able to utilise their paid time off for volunteering to support causes close to their hearts.
For even stronger healthy communities we are excited to be extending our commitment and involvement including the following initiatives:
- Focus on the barriers to work for young people, supporting local education facilities in a variety of ways to open up the world of work. This includes aspiration-raising activities through to having a recruitment process that is accessible and easy to navigate.
- Supporting those in society who are marginalised. In the same way we want our colleagues to bring their whole self to work, we are keen to ensure that those within our communities are benefitting from the work that we do. We see this as a fundamental way of supporting social mobility in society.