Barclays 2008 Annual Report Download - page 69

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Business review
Barclays PLC Annual Report 2008 67
In 2008, Antony Jenkins, CEO Barclaycard was appointed Diversity and
Inclusion Executive Champion to drive our diversity agenda across Global
Retail and Commercial Banking. Initiatives in 2008 included establishing the
requirement that every senior executive has a diversity objective linked to
their performance goals.
In 2009, we intend to extend our Women’s Leadership Programme,
aimed at developing talented women employees, across all 15 countries
in our GRCB – Emerging Markets business with secondments of between
3 and 12 months.
Environment
We seek to minimise our environmental impact through reducing Barclays
energy, water and waste footprints and managing the risks and
opportunities associated with climate change.
Businesses have a vital role to play in managing and mitigating climate
change. At Barclays, we recognise that we have an impact on the
environment both directly through our own operations, and indirectly
through our supply chain and corporate lending. We monitor and manage
both sets of impacts.
In 2008, Barclays set environmental targets that apply to global
operations. We will measure our performance over three years from 2009
to 2011 against a 2008 baseline.
The targets are to reduce:
– CO2emissions by 6% per employee, achieving an average 2% reduction
per year
– energy use from buildings (excluding data centres) by 6% per
employee, achieving an average 2% reduction per year
–
water use by 6% per employee, achieving an average 2% reduction per year.
We made our UK and European operations carbon neutral by
offsetting emissions from energy use and travel. We are on track to make
our global banking operations carbon neutral by the end of 2009.
Environmental and social risk
The majority of the environmental and social risks associated with our
business are indirect. These impacts arise through business relationships,
including those with our supply chain and those with our clients through
financing activities.
We apply our Environmental and Social Impact Assessment policy (ESIA)
to projects that we are considering financing.In 2008, a total of 31 project
finance deals were assessed against the Equator Principles, a set of social and
environmental criteria adopted by many banks. In addition, the Environmental
Risk Management team assessed 229 non-project finance transactions.
We continue to assess our environmental and social impact
beyond the project finance remit of the Equator Principles and are
working to include climate change and human rights considerations
in these assessments.
Responsible global citizenship
We acknowledge and accept that we have an obligation to be a
responsible global citizen, and our sustainability efforts help us to achieve
this. This means managing our business and supply chain to improve our
social, economic and environmental impact, and doing business ethically.
Community Investment
Investing in the communities in which we operate is an integral part of
Barclays sustainability strategy. During 2008, we maintained our levels
of investment in communities despite the challenging conditions. We
invested £52.2m and more than 57,000 colleagues in 31 countries were
involved in volunteering, fundraising and regular giving. In addition,
Barclays launched a three-year global community investment partnership
with UNICEF, the leading children’s organisation, in which we committed
to invest £5m.
Human Rights and Barclays
In June 2008, we refined our statement on human rights (first introduced
in 2004) which outlines the approach we take to human rights through
our three main areas of impact – as an employer, as a provider of financial
services to customers and clients, and as a purchaser of goods and
services from suppliers. We aim to operate in accordance with the:
– Universal Declaration of Human Rights
– OECD Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises
– International Labour Organisation’s Core Conventions.
Barclays is active in developing the global business and human rights
agenda through our membership of two organisations – the Business
Leaders’ Initiative on Human Rights, launched in 2003 of which we are a
founder member, and United Nations Environment Programme Finance
Initiative (UNEP FI), for which we co-chair the Human Rights Workstream.
We extended the guidance provided to our employees on human
rights in 2008 to include access to an online tool for front-line lending
managers, which assists in identifying and mitigating human rights risks.
Supply chain
We work closely with our suppliers to help them manage their own impacts
and ensure they share our commitment to sustainability. Our Group-wide
sourcing process includes criteria for measuring and assessing our
suppliers’ sustainability. Tenders for supplies deemed to have a potentially
high sustainability impact or risk, such as print or corporate wear, require
suppliers to complete our sustainable supply chain questionnaire on their
sustainability impact, policies and management processes.
During 2008, we continued to engage directly with our suppliers on
sustainability, both as part of our ongoing supplier relationships and to
address specific issues such as reducing their carbon emissions.
31 project finance deals
were assessed against the
Equator Principles
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