Corporate responsibility report - Aegis Group plc Annual Report and Accounts 2011

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Environment / Enabling sustainable lifestyles

In 2011, we conducted a strategic review of our environmental strategy, targets and base-line year after the expiry of our 2010 targets.

As a result of this review and stakeholder consultation, we decided to expand the scope of our disclosure beyond our energy and business travel emissions, to include indirect greenhouse gas emissions as part of the wider value chain and multiple stakeholders.

Our environmental approach is three-pronged:

–: raising internal environmental awareness and activity through our Green Bean network of environmental champions around global campaigns and local initiatives to change behaviour
–: working closely with facilities and procurement managers in our material markets to achieve the Aegis Media Green Standard (equivalent to ISO14001) in our material markets
–: engaging internal and external stakeholders in a global environmental initiative that uses digital technology to take locally relevant steps to reduce our carbon footprint in our value chain.

What went well?

–: Reflecting two years of constant improvement, we achieved our highest ever score in the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) in 2011, making us the no. 1 media agency this year. With a disclosure score of 79, the CDP suggests “senior management understand the business issues related to climate change and are building climate change risks and opportunities into core business”
–: We achieved an 8.6% decrease in our carbon footprint intensity. We reduced our scope 1+2 emissions intensity by 12.8% and our business travel (scope 3) emissions by 3.4%. This decrease was noticeable across all our regions and represents the outcome of the ongoing Aegis Media Green Standard process and the Green Bean awareness efforts
–: We achieved an increase in the rate of recycling and the number of recycling streams across our agencies to 58% in 2011. This is one of the first steps that offices can take to move from our minimum standards on the way to the Aegis Media Green Standard set of best practices.
–: For the first time, we disclose an estimate of our downstream scope 3 emissions around the environmental impacts of the media services we provide: 2,163,137 metric tonnes of CO₂. Using the Carbon Track tool, we strongly believe this information sheds light on the position of marketing in global emissions and will open up new avenues to devise environmentally friendly solutions in the marketing value chain
–: We launched the Aegis Media Green Standard in 4 markets: Poland, Austria, Switzerland and Germany to work towards reviewing their environmental performance in their offices to reach the best practice of the Aegis Media Green Standard. This process brings together facilities, finance, HR, communications and Green Beans in every market to align their environmental efforts to the global strategy
–: As part of an ongoing office consolidation and resource efficiency drive globally, we moved to our new 10 Triton Street headquarters in London. This new building for over 1,000 employees meets the highest environmental standards and is rated BREEAM excellent.

What did not go so well?

–: We did not achieve limited assurance on our basic environmental data in 2010. As a result, we were not able to move the baseline year from 2008 to 2010 as planned
–: We did not have sufficiently detailed and reliable data on our tier 1 supply chain to establish a first baseline of our upstream scope 3 emissions. As a result of our initial assessment in 2011, it was determined that our only global supply line is our IT hardware and software (from laptops to servers). In our decentralised management structure, our other suppliers are selected and managed at a local level
–: We have not been able to launch a global initiative that meets our Future Proof model: using digital innovation to enable employees and other stakeholders to take direct, locally relevant action to reduce environmental pollution.

2012 Targets

We will rally the Green Bean network around 2 global environmental awareness campaigns: Earth Hour/Earth Day and Clean It Up!

We will complete a pilot project around our global environmental initiative.

We will work with facilities and management to increase the number of offices having the Aegis Media Green Standard to 10 of our material markets in 2012.

Community / Promoting sustainable communities

With the achievement of our community target in 2010, our community strategy remained the same throughout 2011.

As part of the strategic review, however, new targets were confirmed and the scope of community investment was increased to include all our stakeholders.

Our community approach is three-pronged:

–: raising internal social awareness through our Aegis Media CARES network of community champions around global campaigns to build a culture of volunteering
–: working with material markets to launch specific local partnerships to build on our global community initiative
–: engaging internal and external stakeholders in our global community initiative GlobalGivingTIME that uses digital technology to take locally relevant steps to increase our community investment.

What went well?

–: We remained part of the FTSE4Good index, which includes all environmentally and socially responsibly run companies in the FTSE. We scored above average in the first ESG assessment as part of FTSE4Good in 2011
–: Building on our first attempt last year, we measured our community impacts based on the London Benchmarking Group (LBG) guidelines for reporting charitable activities. This has resulted in a better ability to evaluate the impact of Future Proof on local communities, and a deeper level of insight into our activities, both in terms of inputs and outputs
–: We continued to increase the value of our community investment to £5.48m in 2011, a threefold increase on 2010. This represents 3.4% of pre-tax profits, 0.5% of revenues and approximately 0.6% of our employees’ time, expertise and knowledge. This puts us well on track to reach our goal of sharing 1% of employees’ time by 2015
–: We increased our level of employee engagement by 12.5% in 2011 to a total of 3,128 employees involved in Future Proof. In total, they volunteered 17,490 hours for charitable causes
–: The top 3 charitable causes across our global network were Education & Young People, Social Welfare and Health. We also saw a shift from “charitable gifts” (one-off donations) to more strategic and longer-term engagements. An example of this is Aegis Media Switzerland’s launch of the “Kanzlei Kinder” project, focused on cleaning up the local square for children to use
–: In 2011, 346 charities were helped in 210 activities, with a total of 4,777 beneficiaries, of which 60.5% reported a positive change in behaviour or attitude as a result of our support
–: The top impacts on our employees include 74.4% of employees indicating a positive change in attitude and behaviour. They also reported an increase in problem solving and communication skills, for instance, as a result of using GlobalGivingTIME in 2011. Our champions reported that 55.7% of our charitable activities increased employee pride and commitment in Aegis, with 15.2% raising the profile of the company
–: We were able to measure our community investment both in terms of generic time and specialist pro-bono volunteering for the first time, and gained a good insight into the leverage our charitable activities provided for further fundraising and corporate support through discounted and/or free media space for charitable partners. In association with our media partners, around £3.45m worth of media space was procured for supported charities, and a total of £0.45m in pro bono time donated.

What did not go so well?

–: We did not achieve limited assurance on our basic community data in 2010. As a result, we were not able to move the baseline year from 2008 to 2010 as planned
–: We did not succeed in fully rolling out the GlobalGivingTIME initiative to all our markets in 2011. This is partially due to this year’s strategic review, but also due to significant restructuring across regions in 2011
–: Not every one of our material markets developed a specific local partnership in 2011 to build on our global community initiative.

2012 Target

We will rally the Aegis Media CARES network around 2 global community campaigns, our Volunteer Challenge and our Olympic Challenge.

Upon reaching global coverage with GlobalGivingTIME, we will launch this global initiative with one of our external stakeholders.

We will work with the material markets to launch a local partnership to build on our global community initiative GlobalGivingTIME.

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