Corporate and social responsibility
As an insurer we can exert a strong beneficial influence by promoting effective risk management. We see a clear correlation between forward-looking businesses that have such controls in place and businesses that are good corporate citizens.
Corporate social responsibility at Beazley has two main dimensions: how we conduct our own business and how we influence our clients in the conduct of theirs. Below we describe the measures we took in 2011 to ensure that as a company we met our responsibilities. But as an insurer we can also exert a strong beneficial influence by promoting effective risk management. We see a clear correlation between forward-looking businesses that have such controls in place and businesses that are good corporate citizens.
The responsibilities of our business
In continuing to build Beazley as a premier risk-taking business, we take our corporate, social and environmental responsibility seriously. We constantly consider the ethical implications of how we operate and put policies and procedures in place to sustain our commitment.
Intrinsic to our culture is an ethical approach to business conducted by and towards all our stakeholders. The values that form the essence of our brand and our working culture are professionalism, integrity, effectiveness and dynamism. Our code of ethics comprises the staff handbook, the handling of personal data, whistle blowing, and financial crime policies. Our conflicts of interest policy provides clear guidance to staff on areas such as inducements and handling sensitive data.
Corporate responsibility
We are an equal opportunities employer and make it our policy to offer equal treatment to employees and prospective employees, ensuring that all are treated fairly and with dignity and respect. We do not permit unlawful discrimination of any kind against any person on the grounds of gender, race, nationality or ethnic origin, age, disability, religious beliefs, sexuality, marital status, working patterns or pregnancy.
We are committed to taking positive action to ensure that all employees receive equality of opportunity in recruitment, training, development, promotion and remuneration.
We strive to ensure the health, safety and welfare of our employees and anyone else who may be affected by our operations. Employees are expected to take reasonable care of their own health and safety at work as well as those of others, and to co-operate with management to create a safe and healthy working environment. All employees, contractors and visitors are subject to induction, training and supervision in aspects of health and safety and additional training in ergonomics and fire safety awareness is provided to all employees. All health and safety matters are communicated via notice boards, email memos, the intranet and safety representatives. Overall responsibility for health and safety at Beazley rests with the chief operations officer of the group, Ian Fantozzi.
We believe that the knowledge and skills of our employees are a key element of organisational success and we therefore invest in training and development. Expanding this knowledge and skills is the focus of our ‘managing for performance’ strategic initiative, which has now been running for three years. We ensure that training is accessible by everyone and recognised as a shared responsibility between individual employees and the organisation. Responsibility for the provision of training and development sits with the head of talent management, Penny Malik. In 2011 we introduced a number of activities with direct executive involvement and sponsorship, reinforcing the importance placed upon training and development throughout the group.
Employees are kept informed of developments in our business through internal communications including formal company-wide briefings that occur twice a month, team meetings, monthly emails updating employees on our strategic initiatives, and an information-rich intranet.
Communication is a two way process. We conduct a detailed annual leadership survey that provides managers, team leaders and senior executives with valuable feedback. In 2011, we participated in the Great Places to Work survey, the world’s largest employee engagement programme, which put us among the top 50 companies in the UK for pay and benefits, but identified opportunities for improvement in team coordination and opportunities for recognition. We plan to run this survey biennially. We are proud of our working culture that ensures we achieve our aim to attract, reward and retain talented staff in competitive markets and support and develop them as they strive to perform to an excellent standard.
Volunteering
We encourage employee involvement in a range of community programmes across the group and each employee can take up to two days per year to participate in charitable and local community initiatives. We liaise closely with the Lloyd’s Community Programme (LCP) and encourage staff to get involved in helping pupils in schools in the Tower Hamlets area, one of the most deprived areas in the country. Beazley is involved in two schemes on a weekly basis – reading and number partners. During 2011, we had 15 volunteers participating in this very successful scheme at Canon Barnett school in Aldgate and we are targeting 25 readers for 2012. We also had 14 volunteers participating in a student mentoring programme, piloted last year.
Teams are encouraged to get involved with local charities as part of their annual away days. In the UK, 61 members of staff participated in a ‘helping hands’ volunteering day, coordinated through the LCP. In the US we coordinated our efforts on a national scale: our offices participated in a Beazley Week of Service between September 12 and 16, organising volunteer activities with the charity Feeding America to help food banks sort, evaluate and package donated food.
In 2012, a financial literacy workshop for pupils at Canon Barnett will be held in conjunction with Lloyd’s. Andrew Horton is participating with other Beazley volunteers. The workshop is based on the ‘How the Real World Works’ book series, which included a book written by children about Lloyd’s.
Charity
We made total charitable donations during 2011 of $167,702. In the UK, we made charitable donations during the year ended 31 December 2011 of £57,475 (2010: £56,265). The UK charity budget is managed by a charity committee chaired by Jonathan Gray and consideration is given to a wide range of activities, particularly where members of staff are engaged in fund raising activities. We support three chosen charities to which the committee donates an annual payment, Rwanda Aid (international), Concordia (local) and Trees for Cities (ecological); as well as supporting our staff in fundraising for their chosen charities. We have sponsored 24 of our staff with £13,475 and in return they have raised a total of over £50,000 for their selected charities. Events that were completed included the Three Peaks challenge, skydiving, and the Paris Marathon. At the latter alone over £16,000 was raised for Macmillan Cancer Nurses.
We run a payroll-giving scheme in the UK in association with the Charities Aid Foundation. In the year to 1 October 2011, 27 employees took part, donating £42,488 to 33 charities.
Our US charity committee is chaired by Judy Patterson. Again, consideration is given to a wide range of activities, especially where members of staff are actively involved in fund raising themselves. During the year ended 31 December 2011, $75,000 was donated to various charities, notably Susan G. Koman for the Cure (breast cancer) and Feeding America.
No political donations were made by the group in either the current or prior reporting period.
Environmental responsibility
Beazley strives to achieve environmental best practices in the management of its global offices and in the acquisition of its goods and services. Beazley’s commercial management team is responsible for Beazley’s global offices and for the procurement of goods and services.
In the procurement area we pursue the following best practices:
- In all requests for proposals over $25,000 for the procurement of commodities we request and evaluate as part of the proposal information each supplier’s ‘green’ and environmentally responsible initiatives in the manufacture and delivery of their products;
- We carefully evaluate and compare each supplier’s ‘green’ initiatives and will give appropriate weighting to the quality and consistency of a supplier’s programmes when making an award;
- Once a supplier has been awarded a contract, we track and monitor the supplier’s green initiatives to ensure that they are maintaining the standards and programmes represented in the request for proposal and contract; and
- We track and report on the percentage of Beazley’s applicable commodity spend that is attributable to green/sustainable commodities.
Progress achieved in 2011 is illustrated below:
GHG report for the UK head office for 2010 emissions
Beazley submitted case studies to Climatewise detailing the environmental measures taken at Beazley. Commercial management (CM) produced a report which indicated a 5.75% emissions reduction based on Scope 1 and Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions.
GHG report for US for 2010 emissions
The three largest US offices, where more than 60% of our employees are located, were measured and data compared against 2009 (the first year US data was captured). There was a 5% increase in emissions compared to 2009 data which was due to increased business travel as the US business expanded.
New AC units in London datacentre
As reported to ClimateWise, we installed new air conditioning units in the datacentre in the head office in London. These new units are more energy-efficient to operate and reduce the loss of air (and hence emissions) which occurred with the older units.
Travel/video conferencing
We track and report on the number of employees who choose to voluntarily downgrade their business flights from a higher class of services permitted under Beazley’s travel policy. These voluntary downgrades result in a decreased carbon footprint for each such employee. During the course of 2011, 149 employees opted to downgrade their flight status.
All our offices are equipped with video conferencing capability. We have been using video conferencing for over five years and employees are encouraged to utilise video conferencing, thereby reducing the necessity of business travel.
Paper/stationery
We receive monthly reports from our UK and US office and stationery suppliers on the environmental impact of using recyclable / FCS paper. In addition to these reports showing us how our buying selections impact the environment, we also monitor our carbon footprint using various metrics including the number of trees saved and the quantity of electricity saved. Throughout all UK offices and our three main US offices, duplex (double-sided) printing is enabled on all copiers/printers and measures are underway to extend this to all other US offices.
UK couriers/cars
We endeavour to use the same couriers and service companies as other tenants in the head office building in London to reduce the carbon footprint of vehicles coming into and out of London. Beazley UK also uses Climatecars as a preferred car transportation company. Climatecars entire fleet of cars consist of hybrid/energy efficient vehicles. Beazley US does not use a company-wide car service. Employees are encouraged to use public transportation.
Reducing consumption and waste
We have, wherever possible, adopted the use of glasses and crockery in place of paper/plastic products. In the UK and some US offices, we provide filtered water and refillable glass water bottles in place of bottled water. This results in less consumption of paper and plastic products, cost savings, and less waste. In most of our UK offices and newer US offices, there are light sensors and/or timed lighting, as well as low-flush toilets. Newer US offices have automatic water faucets in the bathrooms. The London office uses a green electric supply provider. (This is not possible in the US, where electricity is municipally provided.)
Whenever possible, we select furniture for our offices which is made of recycled material, which can be recycled at the end-of-lifecycle. We take into consideration all environmental aspects when building and setting up new office space worldwide and seeks to make environmentally responsible choices whenever possible.
We continue to participate in the ClimateWise programme and, for 2012, are joining Heart of the City, an organisation dedicated to enabling businesses in the City of London to learn from one another how best to develop voluntary and socially responsible programmes in the community.