Our Responsibilities
Savills recognises corporate responsibility as an integral part of being a successful business and maintaining a positive reputation and brand.
Key highlights in 2008:
- People - Established a common set of global Savills Values formalising our pride in our commitment to ethical, professional, responsible conduct and reinforcing the behaviour we expect from our staff.
- Clients - Established an Energy and Environment business group to provide a focal point for our sustainability related services and a ‘one stop shop’ for our clients.
- Environment - Directly reduced the impact of our operations on the environment through practical, on the ground, initiatives.
- Community - Implemented a focused community engagement programme - coordinating our support for local and national charitable groups for the first time. Selected two ‘charities of choice’ in the UK - Honeypot and Land Aid.
The challenging markets we experienced during 2008 have reinforced how our continued success is dependent upon our reputation, brand and strength of relationship with a variety of internal and external stakeholders. In 2007 we identified the benefit of improved corporate responsibility as including:
- being better able to retain and recruit the best people by meeting the expectations and values of current and future staff;
- being able to retain and attract clients by listening to their changing needs and developing new and innovative services; and
- by supporting and enhancing the Savills brand globally through promoting ethical and responsible attitudes.
We feel that the importance of these benefits to the Group has increased during 2008 and the progress we are now making in embedding corporate responsibility in to our day-to-day operations reflects this.
We continue to be a member of FTSE4Good, which measures the performance of companies that meet globally recognised corporate responsibility standards. Our inclusion further highlights our commitment to long-term corporate responsibility.
Our stewardship of corporate responsibility
The Board as a whole takes the lead on corporate responsibility. The newly established GEB is responsible for implementing the Board's corporate responsibility strategy and for ensuring compliance with our corporate values and standards. During 2008, we substantially updated our Group Policy Framework, which defines core financial, operational and compliance standards by which we operate, to ensure that they are clearly articulated and understood by Savills’ people worldwide.
Key corporate responsibility related standards that were developed or updated during 2008 include a comprehensive update to our Group Health & Safety Policy, the development of a Group Ethical Procurement Policy incorporating oursupport for International Labour Organisations (ILO) Core Principles, and the update of a number of standards relating to compliance obligations and professional conduct.We continue to include the consideration of corporate responsibility related issues in Key Risk Registers ensuring that we are quick to identify emerging issues and opportunities details in Risks and Uncertainties.
Our Corporate Responsibility Working Group was established in 2007, is chaired by the Group Chief Executive and comprises senior representatives from a range of business lines and central functions. TheWorking Group defines the framework for our corporate responsibility related initiatives, coordinates activity and monitors Group-wide progress and performance. Operational forums, reporting to the Working Group are established to focus on the four key themes of our corporate responsibility activities: People, Clients, Environment and Community.
We demand the highest professional standards from all of our people all of the time and have a zero tolerance to breaches. However, given the breadth of activities and the number of people we employ we do not always meet the high standards we aspire to, we treat this with the utmost seriousness through our disciplinary procedures.