Sustainability governance structure
We have a highly decentralised business model that places our operational resources close to our customers through locally-managed, autonomous companies. Our approach to sustainability governance across the wider group aligns with this decentralised business model.
At June 2024, our Group-level sustainability governance structure is as follows:
Our Board is ultimately responsible for approving our Sustainable Growth Model, which has sustainability at its core and includes oversight of climate-related risks and opportunities. Our sustainability agenda is led by our Chief Sustainability Officer, who has principal responsibility for our sustainability activities and policy.
She is also our Sector Chief Executive for Environmental and Analysis and a member of the Executive Board, and regularly presents to the Board. The Executive Board is responsible for providing additional direction and oversight of our sustainability approach and internal sustainability expectations, including being responsible for the identification and management of sustainability & climate-related opportunities and risks.
She is also our Sector Chief Executive for Environmental and Analysis and a member of the Executive Board, and regularly presents to the Board. The Executive Board is responsible for providing additional direction and oversight of our sustainability approach and internal sustainability expectations, including being responsible for the identification and management of sustainability & climate-related opportunities and risks.
Please see our TCFD disclosures for further information on our specific climate-related governance structures.
Our Divisional Chief Executives (DCEs) work with the MDs and local boards of each company to encourage the consideration of sustainability opportunities and risks in strategic planning, in a way that is relevant and appropriate to the circumstances, markets and capacity of each company.
Each of our companies also has a local board member who is responsible, along with their company MD/CEO, for developing and maintaining their company’s plans to support people and protect the environment.
Strategic materiality assessment
Our Group is made up of nearly 50 autonomous mostly small-to medium-sized companies. We recognised that we needed to help our companies prioritise the time and resources they were spending on sustainability. Therefore, we carried out an informal strategic materiality assessment in 2021.
We recognised that the social and environmental benefits that our companies’ products and services enable allows us to have the largest potential impact, and therefore we prioritise driving growth in sustainability as our first pillar.
In our second two pillars, our key focus areas (diversity, equity and inclusion, and sustainable product design and reducing emsisions) were chosen as the sustainability impact areas which are highly aligned to our purpose, where we can deliver the largest reduction in negative impact, and which are most important and relevant to our internal and external stakeholders.
Our informal strategic materiality assessment considered various sustainability-related issues and impacts arising in our wider value chain and across our companies. It included workshops and discussions with internal stakeholders and key investors, as well as review of key issues for our industries and available data on our own impacts. It also included an initial desktop assessment of our extended supply chain to identify potential positive and negative impacts across financial, human, intellectual, social and natural capital, which provided an initial view of industries and geographies that may be considered higher risk in relation to environmental and social issues.
