5 minute read
Corporate responsibility
Louise Hall, Director - Loss Prevention/Corporate Responsibility of Shipowners’ P&I Club, explains the Club’s corporate responsibility learning journey to date
It was in 2019 when the Shipowners’ Club first began discussions internally around sustainability and how environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors related to our business model as a service provider.
Fast forward three years and we have issued our first Corporate Responsibility (CR) Annual Report (October 2022).
Some may question ‘why did it take so long’ and ‘what have you learnt along the way’? This article goes some way to address these questions, but I invite the reader to look at the Club’ s Report to gain the full picture of our journey so far.
Addressing the first question, it was important to ensure that the Club developed a robust strategy that was in line with its mutual ethos.
To ensure this was the case, and to maintain this focus, principles were developed for all CR related work to abide by, as follows:
> To be transparent to all stakeholders; > Proportionate, fit for purpose and complemented the Club’s business model rather than destabilising it; and > Was of benefit/value to the Club’s membership.
It was decided that we would refer to our strategy as corporate responsibility – an all-encompassing approach to sustainability and ESG principles.
Given our ambition to consider the full scope of factors that fell underneath the CR umbrella, it was essential that we engaged with industry experts to ensure our proposed plans were both effective and meaningful.
It quickly became apparent to us that a successful CR strategy is dependent on learning from each other and sharing experiences. Ensuring a sustainable future for the maritime industry will not be possible if we undertake the journey alone.
COLLECTIVE RESPONSE
This is a situation that affects the industry as a whole and therefore requires collaboration and information sharing to facilitate a collective response.
It was with this collaborative stance in mind that the Club chose to be guided by experts, including the University of Birmingham, Biggar Economics and Our Carbon.
As we have progressed on our CR journey we have also benefitted from discussions with our members on CR-related topics and within the numerous associations we are proud to be members of: and we are sure these will carry on as we continue this journey.
In addition, as a mutual insurer and a member of
Louise Hall, Shipowners’ P&I Club
the International Group of P&I Clubs, we were pleased to acknowledge that many of our business activities and internal operations already fell into the remit of CR.
One of our first tasks was to bring all these undertakings under the one umbrella, always ensuring that anything we did was with the view that it was of benefit to our membership. However, there were of course new activities that needed to be carried out in line with strategic objectives. These included: > The undertaking of a materiality assessment and survey to understand the issues of highest priority to the Club and our stakeholders; > The scoping of the Club’s operations against the greenhouse gas protocols to measure our carbon footprint; > The mapping of our business activities to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) reporting standards to ensure our reporting follows global best practice; > The undertaking of an impact assessment to understand our impact on society and the environment; > As part of this impact assessment, the setting of KPIs and benchmark indicators to quantitatively measure the progress of our strategy as well as the collection of the data required to monitor these measures; > A review of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to identify the Club’s current and future contribution to these target areas; > A review of our internal policies and procedures to ensure they reflect our CR strategy; > The development and dissemination of a code of conduct to strengthen our commitment to maintaining our required standards and values across our entire network; and, > The engagement of our investment advisor to perform an ESG-rating of our investment portfolio.
As with everything we do at the Club, communication was, and is, key to our strategy. One of the main factors of CR is transparency and ensuring that a clear and accurate picture of your activities is reported to both internal and external stakeholders.
Prior to issuing the CR Report, part of ensuring a solid foundation for the Club’s strategy was the successful engagement of staff through internal communications.
To effectively facilitate the Club’s work, an internal governance framework was developed. This included a defined reporting structure, the appointment of a director responsible for CR and the adoption of internal CR specialists.
This was further enhanced with the formation of the CR advisory committee, comprised of managers and executive level staff from all areas of the business, to further facilitate internal stakeholder engagement.
CONTINUOUS PROCESS
With all these work tasks and those planned for 2023, it is clear that CR is a continuous process of learning something new every day. One of the first things that we took on board is that CR should be stated and not marketed and this ethos is what the Club continues to keep at the fore when embarking on any new associated workstream.
We made the conscious decision to not communicate the work we had undertaken in the areas of ESG until now.
It was important for the Club, that when detailing our CR strategy externally, it was from a place of substance and action.
With the CR Annual Report 2022, we believe we are in the right place in our strategic roadmap to advise on what we have learnt, detail the process we have been through and outline where we still have work to do.
We hope this may assist others on their own sustainability journeys both within our market and the wider industry.
WHERE NEXT?
So, where do we go from here? As stated, CR is about continually seeking to improve. For the Club, our strategy is about looking at ways to further enhance the frameworks we have developed, continue to engage with stakeholders as to their CR strategies, to inform, share and collaborate where possible and appropriate and to learn how we can potentially have a positive impact for our membership and the industry as a whole.
One of the key guiding principles of the Club’s business plan states that: “We will strive to incorporate and embrace a CR strategy that focuses on the long-term sustainability of the Club while adding value to its business activities.”
