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CSR is a core value at Saint-Gobain. Explore our strategy, performance and case studies.
We aim to improve daily life and operate our business responsibly for the long-term. We do this by taking positive action in a range of areas and working with our brands, suppliers, communities and partners to deliver change.
Long term goals are in place to reduce greenhouse gases as part of our Reducing Environment Impacts pillar.
We collaborate with communities - to create lasting legacies - focusing on training, skills, creating employment opportu...
Reducing the life-cycle impact of our pr...
Our central mission to improve daily lif...
We aim to create a diverse and inclusive...
Protecting the health and safety of all ...
Reducing the impact of our operations, being a good neighbour and acting in accordance with our values.
Ensuring our supply chain is responsible, free from modern slavery and meeting responsible standards.
Our aim is to develop not in isolation, but with the pace of change from external factors in mind. The way our world is changing affects our stakeholders, our markets and broader society. We need to respond to these factors, and our purpose and activity is shaped by our need to help meet these challenges.
Key factors driving our approach are economic, environmental, social and technological. These factors affect our strategy and our areas of focus.
We help to improve daily lives by creating, advocating for and designing solutions that focus on improving the performance and comfort of buildings, infrastructure, transportation and healthcare systems. We do this through collaboration with partners to create new products and systems to meet our customers and societies needs and through advocating for improvements in policy and regulations that support a built environment that delivers better performing buildings.
Our focus on this subject is founded on research and a strong belief that better performing buildings enhance people’s sense of wellbeing, improve educational results, help
people heal better in healthcare settings and make those using buildings more productive and efficient.
We continue to develop our systems approach to designing buildings and highlighting the essential need for a high-performing building fabric.
We believe our business has a strong role to play in helping the industry to shape future policy with the aim of creating better performing buildings that bring improved comfort, for their occupants.
Our approach to advocacy is founded on principles of: collaborating with others, building partnerships, respecting different points of views and being transparent in our views. We always seek to act in accordance with our principles of respect of the law, respect for health and safety, professionalism and integrity
We continue to invest in training for professionals, SME’s and young people. We do this to provide them with skills and accreditations to be able to construct high performing buildings, develop successful businesses and build fulfilling careers in the industry.
Our 8 training centres deliver training in specific trades or products and create an understanding of the role tradespeople play in creating efficient buildings. We deliver training to more than 4,000 students or apprentices each year through our extensive Thistle Partnership with more than 85 colleges in the UK & Ireland and are on-track to meet our 2020 target to provide more than 250,000 hours of training to tradespeople.
We also work to help the industry reach young people, and inform and excite them about the wide variety of careers in our industry.
Climate change is one of the major threats to our generation and future generations. The role of today’s individuals, organisations and government’s is critical to halting climate change sea level temperature rises which will have a devastating impact on our planet and people across the world. We are committed to being part of the solution and consider our role in two important distinct areas:
1/ Firstly, we have an important role to play in helping to reduce carbon emissions which come from buildings, in particular as they are used. It is currently estimated that between 35-40% of total UK & Irish greenhouse gas emissions come from Buildings; and
2/ Secondly, in reducing our own direct and indirect emissions which come from our operational footprint and activities.
The building sector produces one third of solid waste each year, and consumes half of Europe’s natural resources. Moving away from a culture of take-use-dispose is one of the biggest challenges construction faces. And one of the biggest opportunities. To embrace a circular economy in construction action is needed in a number of areas, in particular:
We aim to be a good neighbour and known for being responsible and active in our communities. We want our neighbours to be proud to have our businesses operating near to them – investing in our communities’ growth and prosperity. We do this in a number of different ways:
Safety is our number one priority. At the centre of our approach is the belief that ‘no one should be harmed when working or coming into contact with our operations’ proving that ‘We care about each other, our suppliers, our customers and the communities in which we do business.’ We have established a series of lagging and leading indicators to support EHS2025 that enable us to measure and improve our performance by implementing a range of solutions in the short, medium and longer term.
We are also committed to our colleagues ongoing development and to protecting and improving their long-term physical and mental health and well-being. Like all progressive employers we want to see our colleagues enjoy long, varied and challenging careers, reach their full potential and help them to be productive. Productive, healthy and well colleagues deliver great service to customers, build stronger teams, make better decisions in meeting customers’ needs and will help us deliver our innovation and digital strategies.
We are working to promote health and wellbeing across the organisation, invested in more training to develop leadership teams with the knowledge and skills to help colleagues improve their health and wellbeing. We continue to focus on our dedicated health and wellbeing digital platform ‘Fit 4 Life, Fit 4 Work’. This platform has helped us reduce the health age of our organisation, specific organisational health risks and understand better the wellbeing issues our colleagues face.
We aim to be recognised as an open and engaging organisation where difference is valued, people are able to be their best and collaboration is fostered to benefit ourselves, our customers and our communities.
We have an established cross-brand, cross-function Steering Group who have developed and are implementing a clear and detailed roadmap of our priorities based on four key areas: Leadership, Career Progress, Attracting the best and the Employee Journey. We know we have a lot of work to do across these areas to achieve our aim and are now implementing detailed action plans, and raising awareness with all colleagues to explain why it is important to our business and to help us achieve our goals in terms of being a diverse and inclusive organisation.
Over the long term, we have made considerable progress in reducing accidents in our business. This progress shows our business is becoming safer. In 2010 our lost time indicator [TF1] was double our current rate and our total recordable incident rate [TF2] was: 13.59 – nearly five times higher than in 2017. As our safety culture has matured our rate of incident reduction has decreased, therefore our focus, in 2017, has been on raising awareness of the importance of having positive personal conversations with colleagues.
These conversations focus on individual’s attitudes, behaviours and risks related to health and safety in their workplace – these positive conversations will help to further embed our culture. We have also prioritised communication, the development and skills of colleagues with safety leadership or responsibilities and on the further planning for how we will deliver our goals embodied in our EHS2025 Roadmap which sets out our ultimate aim of Zero Harm.
Our supply chain is critical to our goal to be a responsible business. We have over 25,000 suppliers from 40 countries.
Our key challenge is the size and breadth of our supply chain - with 36 businesses and a mix of local, national and international suppliers and an annual spend of more than £2bn.
Having transparency of our supply is ever more important. We have recently implemented a new approach to discovering and addressing potential hotspots in our supply chain that requires further exploration and investigation. This new approach identified two areas where we have recently focussed: Bulk Bags for heavy building materials and Mika (a quarried or mined mineral that is a raw ingredient in our Gypsum activities). We assess and audit our suppliers and, if needed work with them to improve performance, in terms of their health and safety, employment conditions and staff welfare.
Six of our businesses are certified under the Building Research Establishment [BRE’s] 50001 standard for responsible sourced products. As a large supplier of timber we aim for 100% of timber sourced from recognised responsible sourcing schemes such as FSC or PEFC.
Modern Slavery and the responsibility of our supply chain is an increasingly important area for us, and our stakeholders. We published our Modern Slavery Statement on our website and particularly focussed on three areas: our industry, internal training and high risk areas.
We work with the charity Stronger Together whose aim is to reduce modern slavery, particularly hidden forced labour, labour trafficking and other hidden third party exploitation of workers. We support the industry by helping Stronger Together to develop tools, resources, best practices and training aids for businesses in the sector to understand the risks of modern slavery and how to work to understand and address supply chain risks.
We continue to invest in supporting small local construction businesses and entrepreneurs via our Entrepreneurship Foundation launched in 2015. We have evolved the Foundation to include a new partnership with the Institute of Enterprise and Entrepreneurs [IOEE], to combine with our partnership with the Construction Industry Training Board to develop the programme for the Foundation. Those who join our Foundation, which is free to join and fully funded by Saint-Gobain now receive a years accredited business training and a Professional Diploma in Managing a Small Business from the IOEE.
Our aim is to support 150 SME’s by 2020. To date we have supported 47 small entrepreneurial businesses.
Saint-Gobain Uk & Ireland's Payment Practices & Performance Report. Period: January 2019 - June 2019. [PDF]
In accordance with the 2015 Modern Slavery Act this is the Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland Modern Slavery Statement covering the period up to 31st December 2018,approved and published on June 26th 2019. [PDF]
The gender pay gap measures the difference between average pay for men and women across our organisation. This report covers the period up to 5th April 2018. Published on the 4th April 2019.
A 2019 PowerPoint overview of the Saint-Gobain Group & UK & Ireland business [PPT Format]
Read the Saint-Gobain Emerging Realities Report. This research looks at current and future megatrends affecting construction.
Reporting on Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland's Payment Practices and Performance Report (July 2018 - December 2018).
Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland, Corporate Social Responsibility Review for 2018 - reviewing performance in 2017 and 2018.
Download our EHS 2025 roadmap, setting out our blueprint for success.
Saint-Gobain Building Distribution Uk & Ireland's 2017 Timber Report as part of our membership of the WWF's Global Forest Trade Network Programme.
Read Saint-Gobain Building Distribution UK & Ireland's latest WWF Global Forest Trade Network report, detailing our performance with regards to timber sourcing.
Saint-Gobain's 2015 statement on forest products as a member of the WWF's Global Forest Trade Network.
Full CSR Review for the period 2014 and 2015.
Full CSR Review for 2016 from Saint-Gobain brand, Saint-Gobain PAM.
Ful CSR Review for 2015 from Saint-Gobain brand, British Gypsum.
Full CSR Review 2014 from Saint-Gobain brand, Jewson.
Key findings
CSR Review for Saint-Gobain UK & Ireland covering the period 2016/17.
