Our Sustainability and ESG commitments

We believe that businesses have an ethical responsibility to do what they can to ensure a thriving, sustainable world. 
As a firm, we want to play our part to address the challenges facing our people and planet without adding to them. That’s why we have a formal strategy in place to allow us to respond to, and embed, Sustainability and ESG into our business in a responsible way. 

We recognise that fully embedding Sustainability and ESG into our decision making and delivering sustained improvements over the longer term will take years of concerted effort. But importantly, we have made strong progress to date and are fully committed to continuous improvement. 

Environmental

As individuals and as part of a bigger organisation, we all have a role to play in protecting, preserving and renewing
our resources so that the way we live our lives today is sustainable for future generations. That means taking action on climate change.

That’s why, last year, we made a commitment to be Net-Zero by 2050, with a near-term target to halve our overall emissions by
2030. We are proud that our targets have since been reviewed and validated by the Science Based Targets initiative (SBTi).

Climate change is a genuine existential crisis for the planet and all of us – as individuals and as part of bigger organisations – have a role to play in protecting, preserving and renewing our resources so that the way we live our lives today is sustainable for future generations.

This is why as a firm we have committed to becoming Net Zero by 2050, halving our overall emissions by 2030 and have been operating as a Carbon Neutral organisation since 2020. 

You can read more about our environmental commitments and our roadmap to Net Zero here and in our annual Environment Report. 

Social

As a large employer of 7,500 people we know that as a firm, we have, and want to have, a lasting social impact.

The social element of ESG spans a wide range of issues including how our work serves the public interest, equality, diversity and inclusion, both physical and mental wellbeing, citizenship and more. 

Our approach to these issues include putting in place ED&I ambitions, publishing our gender and ethnicity pay gaps annually, offering our people up to ten ‘citizenship days’ per year and being awarded a Gold award for our wellbeing strategy from mental health charity Mind. 

You can read more about our approach and social impact in our Culture and Impact report.

Governance 

Good governance is crucial for making sure there are the right checks and balances in the way that we run our business. It provides oversight and challenge of the decisions being made by the firm’s leadership – ensuring these decisions are in line with the firm’s culture and grounded in our core purpose, that they comply with law and regulations and that they meet the needs of all our internal and external stakeholders by enabling the firm to deliver high quality work.  You can find out more about the governance structures we have in place by reading our Transparency Report.