At an event in London, our Global Responsible Business Officer, Gillie Fairbrother unveiled our 2024 Responsible Business Report. Looking back on the progress we have made across the three core pillars of her People, Planet, Purpose strategy, the report served some noteworthy highlights for Davies, including a brand-new Office of Responsible Business function, two brand-new Employee Resource Groups, an increase in women leadership representation, more great Innovation Lab ideas coming to fruition, and a staggering £67,000+ invested in community programmes through the Davies Foundation. 

With the report finally out there, we caught up with Gillie to ask her more about this year’s report and its results, and the future plans for Davies’ Responsible Business strategy.  

Congratulations on the launch of the 2024 report! How was it for you looking back on all the progress made this year?  

Gillie: Thank you so much! Putting together this year’s report felt really special as, for the first time, I had figures from the previous report to compare to—so being able to physically see marked improvements in, for example, female leadership figures, was really exciting and rewarding for me. It was also really pleasing to be able to see that the work we’ve put in with our People, Planet, Purpose initiatives and objectives are paying off, and moving us in the right direction.  

It’s clearly been a great year, with many achievements highlighted in this year’s report. Is there a standout piece for you?   

Gillie: We’ve made some great headway in terms of our environmental goals—particularly in terms of submitting our net-zero goals to, and having them approved by, the SBTi. This means we can properly get started on those objectives we laid out in our Planet section of the report and continue to hold ourselves accountable.   

There were a lot of people involved in putting the report together, and we had an abundance of great work to highlight, so the scope and collaboration efforts are standout elements themselves. However, one particular highlight this year was the inclusion of our supplier spotlight, where we highlighted the fantastic work our supplier, Masterfix, does to further our environmental sustainability efforts—we even invited them to speak at our report launch event to help spread word about how significant the work they do is. 

Another great success in my eyes was the appointment of our Climate Analyst, Burhan, who will be leading on our decarbonisation strategy. I’m very excited to see where his work in this area takes us and look forward to being able to report more on it next year! 

Those are both great accolades, and we look forward to seeing how they develop into FY25. On the other side of the coin, are there any areas you hoped to see more progress in, and how do you tackle reporting on these? 

Gillie: It’s still early doors for our responsible business strategy, which was only established around this time last year, so I think it helps that I already have quite a realistic view of how sustainability works, and that it takes time to build initiatives from the ground up. In fact, a lot of sustainability initiatives will be much longer term, and we won’t see marked improvement for come five or 10 years down the line. So, it’s important not to get too caught up in figures—they aren’t exclusively indicative of all the effort and work we, or any other business, puts in behind the scenes. My view is that if we have made progress on any of our objectives or in line with any of our core pillars, then it’s worth celebrating regardless of how the figures look. 

However, one example from this year for us was that our emissions did go up, rather than down. At face-value, we acknowledge this could look like a step back in terms of meeting our goals, but this has actually been down to improved reporting and our growth through numerous mergers and acquisitions. With our company rapidly expanding, we are now prepared to see this uptick in our emissions data and can acknowledge that it doesn’t mean we’re performing badly. Instead, we’re able to take care of more emissions, on a larger scale, to pull into our reduction strategy.  

So ultimately my message to other businesses is that while it can feel a bit daunting to put forward any goals or targets you haven’t quite met, transparency is key in these types of reports. That, and having a set plan of action about how you’ll further your efforts and letting people know about it will demonstrate your positive intent. And that’s all anyone can really ask of you—to continue to drive responsibility.  

Absolutely! And while we’re on the topic of things not theoretically going “to plan”, were there any challenges you came up against when putting together the report this year? And if so, how did you navigate these? 

Gillie: Collecting and handling data is always tricky at group-level—as is keeping up-to-date while continuously reporting on the financial year prior. However, one perk of doing so, means we already have plenty of exciting things to share in the next report! 

Collating the report takes me a good few months, so it can definitely feel like a long process at times, but I’m committed to capturing all the good work that’s happening or has happened already, as well as continually setting ourselves improvement goals based on the results we have in front of us.  

It’s also worth noting that as Davies evolves and the world changes, we need to ensure a broad and updated view of sustainability issues, which poses a challenge of its own. However, we plan to undertake a double materiality re-assessment and all-stakeholder survey in the next couple of years to help us with this.  

The report spotlights a champion for each of the core pillars of the Responsible Business strategy. Is it difficult to narrow these down, and if so, how are these decided on eventually? 

Gillie: Oh, absolutely! We have an abundance of extraordinary people at Davies, who are passionate about doing business responsibly. The process typically involves me going to the leadership teams where the relevant work is happening and asking them for nominations. With these, I then weigh up the impact each person had had, and how closely this impact aligns with the goals and objectives laid out in our three-tiered responsible business strategy. Our champions tend to be those who haven’t set out to become champions, or even to gain recognition really, but who have a natural passion for the projects they’ve been working on, which makes it really nice and authentic. 

Now that the 2024 report is released, are there any initiatives you’re hoping to roll out in the coming year that you can tell us about? 

Gillie: The plan for next year is to continue build on our responsible business efforts across a broad range of activities. But more specifically, our biggest jobs will be to advance our decarbonisation plan and our supply chain engagement.  

Similarly, we will be looking to enhance our sustainability efforts beyond just our operations. We have already managed to extend this to some of our offerings within our property claims service, but next year, we’ll be looking to roll this out in many more parts of our business.  

We also have a lot of plans in the pipeline for growing the Davies Foundation—the charitable arm of our business. This work is centred around support and fundraising initiatives for local causes that are most important to our colleagues. So, it’s important to me that we get to do much more of this moving forward. 

Well, we can’t wait to see your strategy go from strength to strength over the next 12 months. Final question: Where would you like the business to be this time next year with regards to responsible business? 

Gillie: Next year, I’m focused on expanding and supporting the environmental goals of our clients through to our very own supply chain. In order to do this though, we will need to place increased emphasis on educating our business to make more sustainable choices, and also be consciously measuring the positive impact that pivoting to more efficient processes has. It takes stakeholder and wider colleague buy-in for anything I recommend to be successful, and therefore being open about the great things that happen when change is made is crucial. 

I am really optimistic about the future of Davies and us meeting the objectives we have set and building on our responsible business strategy to achieve fairness for all—be it our planet, or the people who are living on it.   

Responsible business is good business, so investing in your strategy is well worth it. Looking for inspiration or to find out more about our Responsible Business strategy? Visit our website: https://davies-group.com/responsible-business/.  

You can keep up with Gillie in next month’s Responsible Business blog or catch her over on LinkedIn in the meantime.