Powering Brand Engagement, through outstanding communications, conversations and outcomes that make lives better. Read more in this chapter on why our purpose beyond profit is so important to us, and what it could mean to you and everyone else.
Our Purpose, and the Cultural Beliefs – the values and behaviours we want to see in all that we do - have been developed through consultation with colleagues and stakeholders and we all recognise the importance of always living and operating by these.
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. Turn the page to learn about them individually.
Listen to Ricky Alfred, Director of Responsible Business, talk about purpose and how we manage that through our Steering Wheel.
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 in to 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 that articulates how we support and protect the UN Guiding Principles and ILO Conventions on Human Rights.
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 our priopriatry tool ‘Green Up’. Allowing 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.
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 for them to undertake 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 has helped us with valuable insight to further inform our approach.
We fully recognise the need and benefit to 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 creates value along the whole supply chain.
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 colleagues’ input
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 and share and learn from leading practice.
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. From aspiration raising 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.