With countries all around the world introducing new ethical, social and environmental pledges, it’s becoming increasingly important to think about sustainability on an individual business level. This is something that we at IGNIFI are particularly passionate about.
To get an accurate measure of where we are currently in terms of sustainability, we recently undertook an EcoVadis assessment and were awarded a Silver EcoVadis Medal for our current efforts. In this blog, we’re discussing the assessment in more detail, why measuring your sustainability is important and how we are planning to act on our results.
Why did we decide to evaluate our sustainability?
With 2021 seeing the COP26 summit kickstart global pledges to reduce emissions, 2022 is set to be a year of action. Many countries have pledged to considerably improve their emissions status by 2030, and to do this will require an immediate and collective effort to become more environmentally sustainable. Beyond this, there are increasing calls for transparency in business to promote more ethical practices.
On an industry level, this will involve stakeholders making a concerted effort to encourage the raising of standards in corporate governance, particularly in the areas of environment, labour and human rights, ethics and sustainable procurement. One of the ways this is being actioned is through encouraging businesses to ensure that the companies that they partner with and the suppliers they choose are sustainable.
At IGNIFI, we are committed to transparency and so we decided to undertake an official EcoVadis evaluation of our sustainability. Beyond this, the hope was that this evaluation would give us a better understanding of what we are getting right and where we could improve on our current practices.
What is an EcoVadis evaluation?
After some research into sustainability measurement, we decided to choose EcoVadis for a simple and thorough evaluation of our current sustainability level. EcoVadis is the world’s most trusted business sustainability ratings agency, and is becoming increasingly popular within our sector.
Following an EcoVadis assessment, companies are given a scorecard including an overall rating and individual scores for the following areas: environment, labour & human rights, ethics, sustainable procurement) along with a more detailed report on carbon.
Going forward, sustainability measures are set to be an important part of the pitch process, with more sustainable businesses favoured for partnerships – we wanted to ensure that we are ahead of the curve in this area.
What was our EcoVadis rating?
We are very proud of the results we received from our EcoVadis assessment:
Overall, we received a Silver EcoVadis Medal for our current sustainability practices, ranking us in the top 25% of companies assessed.
Within the further subcategories, our scores were:
• Environment – 50/100
• Labour & human rights – 60/100
• Ethics – 60/100
• Sustainable procurement – 30/100
While we are happy with our results so far, scoring above average in 3 out of 4 of the subcategories, a key part of sustainability is continually improving. Our EcoVadis rating has identified our strongest areas along with other areas that we can build on going forward. This has provided us with confidence in our sustainability practices but also a roadmap for how we can go above and beyond.
What does this mean for our clients?
Going green under your own roof is only going to get you so far in the sustainability stakes. It’s important to establish an environmentally responsible supply chain if you want to invest in sustainable business practices.
Procurement teams at over 600 multinationals use EcoVadis ratings to make purchasing decisions every day and in total 85,000+ businesses use this rating. We expect more businesses to follow therefore possessing a widely recognised rating and scoring in the top 25% of all companies means IGNIFI is a sustainable choice as an agency partner for our clients.
Our EcoVadis rating can be accessed by trading partners via a request mechanism. It provides the requesting partner with a trusted assessment of our company sustainability performance while providing IGNIFI with an opportunity to show leadership within healthcare marketing communications, alignment with global best practices and the implementation of sustainability management systems that go beyond compliance.
Current and prospective IGNIFI clients will take comfort that as well as our strong and innovative creativity, we also take our issues of governance and sustainability seriously as well as the soundness of our strategy and transparency in terms of sustainable development.
To keep up to date with the latest news from within the IGNIFI team and to read our next blog as soon as it is published, remember to follow us on LinkedIn along with our other social channels.
Posted by Rob Phillips
Financial Director
