Responsible Business

In August 2021, we signed The Good Business Charter (GBC) and are delighted to have received re-accreditation in 2022. The Charter measures behaviour over 10 components: real living wage, fairer hours and contracts, employee well-being, employee representation, diversity and inclusion, environmental responsibility, paying fair tax, commitment to customers, ethical sourcing, and prompt payment.

An organisation must meet all 10 components to receive accreditation and is focused on encouraging responsible business behaviour and publicly acknowledging those organisations who exhibit such behaviour.

We’re very proud of our Good Business Charter accreditation and since April 2022 have produced an annual Responsible Business Report outlining the actions we are taking in line with each of the 10 components.

These actions include paying a fair living wage, treating our colleagues with dignity and respect, mitigating our impact on the environment, making a clear and transparent commitment to our clients, responsibly sourcing our supplies and paying our fair share of taxes. Take a look at the latest report here.

Climate change is one of, if not the single most important issues of our time and one which SPW is committed to making a priority across the business. We are determined to play our part to tackle global warming and the impact it is having upon our planet and its inhabitants. We are committed to taking action on climate change and other environmental issues on behalf of our colleagues, clients and communities.

Over the past couple of years we have been on a journey to determine our operational carbon footprint and develop a robust sustainability framework including data collection, reporting and developing a plan to achieve net zero carbon operations by 2030.

We’re delighted to have achieved carbon neutrality across our operations in 2022 through offsetting our operational emissions (Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 business travel, colleague commuting and working from home), validated by Climate Partner. These are the emissions we emit from our buildings along with business travel, colleague commuting and working from home.

We’ve also partnered with climate positive impact organisation Furthr, planting more than 100,000 mangrove trees in 2022 in order to offset colleagues carbon emissions. In addition to planting trees, all our colleagues have access to additional support to help them understand and reduce their own carbon footprint. Through our partnership with Furthr, from January 2023 we are also planting seagrass, which has incredible potential for carbon sequestration (the capturing, removal and storage of carbon dioxide CO2 from the earth’s atmosphere).

We believe in collective action, with the vision that the thousand little steps each individual makes, can collectively make a huge difference. Through our internal responsible business network and sustainability champions, our colleagues are the driving force of sustainable initiatives within our business. These champions are focussed on promoting sustainability understanding, ethos and good practice, and supporting the education of others.

We're an organisation willing to take the lead in social change through speaking openly about mental health.

We prioritise wellbeing to create a culture where everyone thrives and feels happy at work. This includes signing the InsideOut Charter, which is committed to ending the stigma around mental health and driving the agenda at the Leadership level.

We provide colleagues access to resources such as the Headspace app, as well as our Employee Assistance Programme which provides free independent and confidential support, including short-term counselling ’

We’ve also partnered with Harkn to provide a platform which allows colleagues to anonymously reflect how they feeling in a safe space. This allows us to genuinely listen and understand how our colleagues are feeling day to day to enable positive action to be taken when required.

We also want to create a better, happier society and we can do that by sharing our financial knowledge to help people aim to make their money work for them, so they can reach their life goals. That’s why we champion financial wellbeing and education. 

Our annual Money and Mind Report, allows people to understand how their day-to-day finances could impact on their wellbeing and stress levels. 

We want to build an inclusive and diverse workforce, where everyone can bring their whole selves to work.

Here are just a few of the great diversity and inclusion initiatives we have got involved in so far:

We have set up a number of engaging D&I employee networks who all seek to drive change for the causes that they are passionate about. We are proud that our networks continue to grow, with a third of colleagues now being a member of at least one network.

We are a part of the #10000BlackInterns programme.

We've partnered with 'Women in Finance' for their Accelerating Change Together programme. A piece of research that helps us to bring about better gender equality in the financial services industry.

We want to make a difference in the communities we work in and that's why we champion volunteering and charitable initiatives that are close to our hearts. 

To centralise all of the great work we do in this space, in 2022 we launched the SPW Charitable Foundation. Through the Foundation, this year we are partnering with three charities chosen by our colleagues; Alzheimer’s Research UK, The Brain Charity and British Heart Foundation. Throughout the year we’ll be doing a range of fundraising to support these fantastic causes.

We also run a number of volunteering and matching schemes and sponsor local community teams and initiatives. This includes all colleagues receiving two Community Action Days per year to support the local community in which we operate, or a charity they are passionate about.