From procurement and supply chain sustainability through to carbon and energy reduction, waste avoidance and circular design, our Impact Report details how we are delivering a series of practical actions that will make a measurable year-on-year difference to our sustainability performance.
We achieve this by providing a range of sustainably-focused services and products that help our clients to meet their sustainability goals while advancing our own ambitions to make a positive impact on the planet.
However, our journey to create a formal program to assess and improve the impacts that IE creates as a business has just started. At the beginning of 2022, we launched the next phase of our sustainability program: Advancing ESG@IE.
We're now more than 12 months into our ambitious journey to make a tangible and measurable difference year-on-year to our sustainability performance.
From procurement and supply chain sustainability, through carbon and energy reduction, waste avoidance and circular design, we’ve started to address every area of sustainability in our ESG (Environmental, Social And Governance) roadmap which is helping us to deliver a series of practical actions across IE that will benefit our customers and help us meet our goals.
Going into our second year of Advancing ESG@IE, we now have our baseline, independently verified, calculations for our carbon footprint which has allowed us to set more detailed objectives for our route to halve carbon emissions by 2030 and get to Net Zero by 2050.
We want sustainability to be integral to every part of our business and something that all our employees consider in their day-to-day actions. Our commitment and investment to our sustainability goals is clear and ongoing.
Since the end of FY23, we’re delighted to report that we’ve been awarded a gold medal from EcoVadis coming in the 97th percentile from over 62,000 rated companies. This has improved from the 59th percentile in 2022, showing the progress we have made in 12 months.
IE is owned by Steelcase, a global, leading organisation that is recognised by its peers and third-party organisations for its commitments to people, the planet and its communities. You can find out more information about Steelcase's award-winning approach to ESG by reading its 2023 impact report or on the ESG section of its website. As a global furniture manufacturer, Steelcase's core operations have a different set of impacts to IE, so we launched 'Advancing ESG@IE' to identify and improve our own individual impacts on the planet.
Within our AdvancingESG@IE initiative, we have produced ambitious long-term (3-5 years) goals along with short-term objectives (12+ months). You can read the full details of how we performed against our FY23 goals and objectives in our ESG Impact Report FY23.
We’ve also included a summary of what we’ve been doing with our FY24 goals in the sections below.
Healthy Planet - Learn more about our work to reduce our carbon emissions and help you meet your sustainability targets.
Read moreHealthy People - How we support our people, clients, stakeholders, and the wider community to thrive.
Read moreHealthy Culture - How we work within our regulations and policies to manage risks and run our company in a transparent and fair manner.
Read more
We will:
We will achieve our goals by:
Our efforts to improve our environmental performance considers how we utilise natural resources and the effect of our operations on the environment, both directly and indirectly across our suppliers.
Our Carbon Footprint
At the end of FY23, the first full year of our Advancing ESG@IE program, we have now defined and collected carbon emission data for scopes 1, 2 and 3.
Scope 1: direct emissions from our operations
Scope 2: indirect emissions from purchased energy
Scope 3: all other emissions that we do not own or control
We then had the results independently verified by Neutral Carbon Zone to comply with its NCZ Silver certification standard.
Total carbon emissions for Scope 1, 2 and 3 in FY23 amounted to 7,054.35 tCO2e.
The initiatives we introduced in FY23 succeeded in reducing the Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 9.3%% compared to FY22.
The largest category of emissions by far was the purchased goods and services in scope 3 (95% of all emissions). This includes all of the furniture and other items that we procure on behalf of our clients. This area provides us with the greatest opportunities to reduce emissions going forwards.
Our Responsibility to Our Clients
We are committed to helping our clients make sustainable choices around their office furniture assets and procurement by promoting circular product principles and low-carbon products.
We are also continuing to grow our workplace services to support this mission.
Our Responsibility to Our Supply Chain
We are also committed to working with our supply partners to drive product circularity and sustainable procurement. We have developed a Sustainability Procurement Policy and an IE Supplier code of conduct that all suppliers must adhere to, as well as an ongoing Supplier Sustainability Program to continuously review how our suppliers can improve their ESG performance.
Our Governance Goals
We will:
Our Fy24 Objectives
We will achieve our goals by:
Governance Structure
IE strives to maintain the highest ethical standards in our operations. We want to do not only what is right but what is best. The IE executive team and Board of Directors strive to continuously maintain our values as we cultivate and grow this culture throughout the organisation.
Governance at IE is based on the principle of bringing together empowered, distributed decision-making and empathic leadership. We believe curating this culture while simultaneously encouraging employees to find their voice drives a unique culture consistent with our core values of treating people with dignity and respect.
ESG Governance
Our ESG commitment starts at the top with our statutory directors responsible for ESG matters. In 2022, we also hired a full-time Sustainability and Compliance Manager reporting to the COO to help progress the implementation of our ESG strategy.
Compliance
We are certified to ISO 9001, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001. We have set up an internal audit function led by our Sustainability and Compliance Manager to ensure we continue to conform to the ISO requirements. We have also improved several of our company policies to ensure we are at the forefront of our compliance obligations.
“Using our core business values to guide us, we are shaping a future that continues to protect the environment, fosters transformational social impact, and sustains a culture where all people feel empowered.”
External ESG Assessment
One of our objectives was to undertake an external assessment of our ESG program to give us a basis and measurement for improvement. In 2022, we achieved a bronze medal from EcoVadis coming in the 59th percentile of companies that had been rated. In 2023 EcoVadis awarded us a Gold medal coming in the 97th percentile from over 62,000 rated companies. This result is a testament to the progress we have made in just 12 months.
Our objective for FY24 is to now become B Corp certified.
Below we have included our policies and accreditations for our different management systems that demonstrate our commitment to the responsible governance of our business.
From procurement and supply chain sustainability through to carbon and energy reduction, waste avoidance and circular design, our Impact Report details how we are delivering a series of practical actions that will make a measurable year-on-year difference to our sustainability performance.
Social
Our Social Goals
Our FY24 Objectives
We will achieve our goals by:
volunteering/charity hours.
At IE, we are committed to supporting our people, clients, stakeholders and the wider community to thrive.
Community Engagement
To continue our support for our local communities we have formalised our community engagement program. In 2022 we were involved in multiple fundraising events for cancer charities and have chosen to volunteer with The Trussell Trust, a charity supporting over 1,200 food banks across the UK.
Employee Welfare
We have put several systems in place to support our employees to be happy and healthy at work and home. These include an Employee Assistance Programme, Retail Discount Schemes and Employee Forum to give our people a voice within the business.
Training and Development
We are committed to delivering continual learning and development opportunities for our employees so they can grow and feel fulfilled at work. We also rolled out a 4-part ESG training programme to educate the team on the concepts of ESG and why the initiative is vital to the business.
Health and Safety
Adhering to Health and Safety legislation is an integral part of our business, and in FY23, we achieved zero Health and Safety non-compliance through our ISO audit.
Equity, Diversity and Inclusion
We have gathered data regarding diversity & inclusion at IE and will use this data to drive our ambition to ensure the company is representative of our community. We have also delivered equity, diversity & inclusion training to staff.