Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) criteria is a set of standards designed to help measure a company’s impact on the environment and society, identifying its transparency and accountability. It’s becoming even more important in the world of business and organisations that get it right can unlock wider company benefits, including improved reputation, lower costs, employee retention and future investment.
Semperian’s aims to ensure that all ESG policies, processes, training, and reporting regimes in the organisation are being implemented and enforced through effective systems and controls whilst being led by the executive team. This is for the benefit of employees, stakeholders, the public and other interested and connected parties.
At IPSL, our procurement team has been working with colleagues from across Semperian improving the implementation of ESG standards through a new procurement project, supporting the Executive team’s aim to ensure ESG principles are adopted throughout the organisation.
Imagile Committed to ESG
With IPSL already committed to integrating ESG into its operational processes, this work aims to further support the business as it continues to develop, learn from, and improve its approach in all relevant areas.
We spoke about this to Wayne Lewis, Sector Head of Procurement:
“This was a procurement project that was started back in 2020 at a time when the pandemic was taking hold, but it’s an area of focus for the business for a long time, and a personal passion of mine, so we wanted to help move the project forward as much as we could.
“ESG principles have long been a priority for the organisation, but we’ve had some work to do in terms of applying these criteria more widely across the business. We’re excited to have got the ball rolling on this piece of work, bringing the various elements of ESG together and looking at how we could better apply these within the procurement department.
“Based on Semperian’s objectives we started by creating an enhanced ESG Procurement Evaluation checklist for key strategic suppliers. The checklist included several areas that were defined by our existing guidelines around Environmental, Social and Governance criteria.
“This checklist allowed us to strengthen our ESG focus through our procurement policy. At the same time, we also drafted a Request to Suppliers, in which we summarised the ESG-related matters that we would like our supply chain partners to put into practice. As an organisation, the suppliers that we want to build stronger partnerships with are those that comply with existing laws, regulations, and social standards, but also those that proactively implement important the ESG action items we outlined.
“The document we created was based on the philosophy and policy that already exists within the business, explaining to our business partners the importance of ESG in how our businesses operate. It also offered guidance on how to put these guidelines into practice to promote ESG and a checklist of items to perform a self-assessment.”
IPSL Procurement Policy
In addition to the checklist, the procurement team supported the development of the Procurement Policy. This defines three key concepts that suppliers must adhere to for Semperian to conduct procurement and build mutual trust and respect. They are as follows:
- Ethical trading in compliance with laws, regulations, and social norms, paying full consideration to perspectives including human rights, environment, occupational health and safety.
- Procurement activities with reputable and reliable suppliers which are selected from comprehensive perspectives including quality, price, delivery time, technical capabilities, ESG activities and business continuity.
- Develop business activities together with our suppliers for which the importance of social responsibility and corporate morality is recognised and understood by those with whom we are building stronger partnerships as we implement fair dealings.
Wayne said: “We already knew that our suppliers shared many of the same values as us, but this process applied an enhanced ESG lens to our relationship with them and the feedback was fantastic.
“Through this work, we hope to foster an ever more collaborative approach to ESG across our organisation, and to build strong, mutually beneficial partnerships with our suppliers that are based on shared values and a commitment to sustainability.”
