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Corporate Responsibility
Our corporate responsibility programme incorporates social, ethical, safety and environmental issues.
Governance
Corporate Responsibility is governed through the Safety, Health and Environment (SHE) committee, with its chairman Nigel Sullivan, Group Human Resources Director, taking responsibility for social, ethical, safety and environmental issues and initiatives within the business.
Environment
Addressing challenges around the environment has been an important focus for Wincanton in 2008/09. Following a programme of research on climate change and discussion with our stakeholders, we launched our five-year Environmental Strategy in March 2009 across the Group. It clearly articulates Wincanton’s belief that corporate responsibility and sustainability present valuable benefits and opportunities for our business, our customers and the wider community. The document outlines our priorities and creates a framework for delivering progress against our objectives. The strategy incorporates our policy statement and 10 key principles to provide guidance for employees, suppliers and customers on the way we work.
We are actively taking responsibility for Wincanton’s impact on the environment, and are measuring progress against five key result areas with a view to working towards a lower carbon future:
- Governance and management
- Performance measurement
- Energy use and climate change
- Waste and recycling
- Progressive product leadership
To facilitate this positive change, we are focusing on embedding the principles of the environment strategy into our culture through employee engagement. Feedback from our 2008 ‘One Voice’ all employee survey cited our approach to the environment as ‘an area for improvement’. In response to this, environmental focus groups have been set up across the business to develop local action plans that cover a range of initiatives, such as car sharing, energy saving and recycling campaigns.
During 2008/09 we ran a data collection pilot at five sites to trial carbon footprint measurement and identify the best system for capturing and recording information. As a result of this, we have now incorporated carbon footprint measures into the Balanced Scorecard programme. Specifically, from 1 April 2009, we will measure:
gas usage per m3
electricity usage per m3
water consumption
diesel per km
red diesel usage
Reporting on these measures every six months will create consistency across the business, monitor our progress and also enable sites to benchmark their performance against each other.
Further information is available in our Annual Report 2009 on environmental progress and initiatives, including WEEE recycling, food waste recycling, fuel efficiency, vehicle developments, progress towards ISO14001, and our intermodal services
Environmental Strategy 2009
People
In 2008/09, we have made significant progress in developing our training programmes across the Group and have gained external recognition for our achievements (see case study).
In April 2008, our employees completed ‘One Voice’, the first ever Group-wide survey across 225 sites in 7 languages. This recorded an overall engagement score of 67%, which has benchmarked highly against other businesses across the commercial spectrum. Since then, the results have been evaluated at a departmental, functional and regional level to identify trends and understand more about our culture. Each contract or function has created action plans based on feedback from the survey and additional focus groups to drive improvements and address any concerns.
This focus on the culture within our business is supported by the rollout of a set of behavioural values across the Group, which began in January 2009. The programme known as IMPACT (Integrity, Mutual trust, Passion, Accountability, Commitment, Teamwork) is designed to ensure that we demonstrate consistent behaviours in our words and actions that support the delivery of our ‘Four Pillars’ promise to customers - to provide operational excellence, customer intimacy, product leadership and value.
Further information is available in our Annual Report 2009 about our various initiatives, including performance reviews, warehouse training, management training, apprenticeships, occupational health and rehabilitation.
Safety
Our relentless focus on Health and Safety has continued to drive improvements across the business. Accident rates fell by 7.2% across the Group in 2008/09 and over a five-year period, the rate has reduced by 34.0% overall.
The central SHE team has further invested in the development of its skills and professionalism, with three of its members achieving Masters qualifications in Health & Safety Management and in Environmental Law.
To promote a consistent approach, our existing successful SHE training programme for managers in operational roles has been extended to France and Poland.
Further information is available in our Annual Report 2009 on our initiatives, including performance measurement, targeting specific risk areas, our Driver of the Year competition, SHELA office launch, independent or customer audits and company car driver safety.
Social
Wincanton understands the importance of helping people both in our local communities and around the world, through sponsorship, donations and even direct involvement. We have a varied programme of support in place, from our Group level sponsorship of Transaid, to national projects and initiatives at an individual site level.
Our German business celebrated its 100 year anniversary in September 2008 and staged a weekend of celebrations in Mannheim for 3,400 guests, uniting employees, apprentices, customers and the local community. Activities ranged from a ‘time travel’ show to dragon boat racing, and the charity prize draw at the end of the event raised €2,000 for a children’s leukemia charity.
During 2008/09, Wincanton became a member of ‘Business in the Community’ in the UK, which is an organisation that mobilises businesses to improve their positive impact on society. Through membership of the regional advisory boards, we will work on priority projects relating to improving sustainability and developing the skills of the existing and future workforce.
As a Group, we continue to support Transaid, a charity working primarily in Africa to reduce poverty and improve quality of life through providing better access to basic services such as health, education and economic opportunities. During 2008, we were also involved in Transaid’s project to build an Industrial Training Centre in Lusaka, Zambia, which will provide professional commercial driver training and aims to reduce accident rates on the roads.
Further information is available in our Annual Report 2009 on our charity, fundraising and social initiatives.
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