Supporting our employees, customers and suppliers is a key priority, and is more important than ever during uncertain times. From ensuring our centres remain open and safe, to hosting wellbeing webinars for employees and customers and committing to prompt payments for suppliers, we work hard to look after our people.
Embedding ESG across Workspace
Our Doing The Right Thing ESG strategy is implemented by our ESG Committee made up of employees from across the business. We have committed to facilitate workshops and seminars to equip employees with the relevant skills and knowledge to deliver our ESG targets.
Our induction programme has been revised so that each new starter receives a two-week long corporate induction, including a business overview from the Executive team and an ESG introduction from the sustainability team. We have also introduced environmental and social objectives for all employees across the business.
Customer engagement on ESG
Our Sustainability Team are always happy to respond to the increasing number of customer enquiries around ESG issues. Our customers are asking us questions about our energy contracts, recycling services, energy-saving initiatives and whether the centre they occupy is a certified green building.
There are three customer environmental groups set up at Kennington Park, The Leather Market and Parkhall Business Centre and we plan to create more going forward. The environmental groups encourage collaboration between customers and the centre teams to reduce their environmental impact through joint initiatives and through sharing energy and recycling data. Customer engagement is vital in order for us to meet our goal of becoming a net zero carbon business.
Supplier engagement
We work with our suppliers to improve our combined environmental performance and every new supplier now receives a detailed ESG questionnaire, including questions on human rights, environmental and social targets, diversity and community engagement.
Workspace already pays its direct employees the London Living Wage and we have committed to bring all third-party contractors onto the Living Wage by April 2022.
We have received external recognition for our engagement with our suppliers and were listed on the CDP Supplier Engagement Leaderboard in 2020/21. This means that Workspace is among the top 7% assessed for supplier engagement on climate change, based on our 2020 CDP disclosure.
