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Sustainability at the heart of Wood
We are committed to embedding sustainable thinking and practice in all that we do, means ensuring sustainability is woven throughout our organisation and management structures.
Wood’s governance structures and processes are designed to ensure accountability, transparency, responsiveness, equity and inclusiveness. They provide core structure from which we operate our company, facilitating empowerment and broad-based participation across the business. Our sustainability programme is informed, and in turn, informs our governance system.
Our approach
Good governance ultimately fosters sustainability and is built on three precedents — economic progress, social development and environmental improvements. As the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda evolves, companies are increasingly expected to develop effective control mechanisms that seek to reduce risk and increase stakeholder value. Our approach to embed sustainability across our governance system, seeks to enable organizational and behavioral change to deliver our focus on sustainable development.
Oversight for sustainability matters is provided at a Board level and strategic delivery overseen by Wood’s Executive Leadership Team (ELT). Reflecting the importance of sustainability to Wood’s long-term future, management of the group’s sustainability programme sits with the President of Sustainability. This role is responsible for the organisation's objectives and initiatives relating to sustainability, the development and implementation of Wood’s sustainability programme and to collaborate with Wood’s business development community to enhance the company’s ability to compete and win work. In addition, the role takes responsibility for embedding the principles of sustainability in Wood’s governance and management systems and reports directly to the Executive President HSSE&S.
Our board and committees
Further insight on the role of our board and committees, can be found in the corporate governance section of our annual report and accounts:
Safety, Sustainability Assurance & Business Ethics Committee (SSABE)
The Safety, Sustainability, Assurance and Business Ethics Committee is responsible for overseeing the Group’s management of Health, Safety, Security, Environmental (HSSE), Sustainability and regulatory compliance & Business Ethics matters, in line with the Group’s policies and values commitment.
Recognising the increasing importance and pace of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agenda, the committee’s terms of reference expanded in 2020 to include accountability for Wood’s approach to sustainability. The primary focus of the committee is to ensure that risks associated with issues relating to HSSE, Sustainability and Business Ethics are understood and managed and oversight is provided to systems and assurance activities in place to minimise the occurrence of major events.
Chaired and comprised of non-executive Board members, the committee oversees the Group’s effectiveness in its approach to managing sustainability issues and responding to sustainability risks and stakeholder needs. The committee meets four times a year, with an additional commitment to deliver a detailed review of sustainability with the full board, on a bi-annual basis.
Executive Leadership Team (ELT) Safety and Sustainability Days
Ensuring we continue to raise awareness and ambition on sustainability issues, we conduct bi-annual Executive Leadership Team (ELT) Safety Days with the full Wood executive team to engage on the topic’s material to our business.
The role of the ELT is to support the critical thinking underpinning our sustainability programme, challenge the basis of decision making and assure alignment with business strategy. Ensuring that there is robust planning and effective roadmaps in place for Wood to achieve the targets we set, the ELT are responsible for making resources available to support their achievement, including the appointment of roles and focal points across the business.
The Executive Leadership Team (ELT) Safety and Sustainability Days are critical to the development of Wood’s sustainability programme and goals, ensuring the business remains informed on key ESG trends and quick to respond to evolve and adapt our approach.
Sustainability and risk
Risk management is imperative to a healthy business. Our ability to identify material matters and respond to our most significant current and emerging risks, ensures we deploy sufficient resource to appropriate risk mitigation measures. Integrating sustainability into our risk management processes enables our business to identify and mitigate the full range of risks applicable to Wood.
Taking a bottom up and top-down approach to identifying risks operates within the organisation as laid out in the group risk management framework.
ESG and Sustainability
Wood’s risk management framework is developed to ensure that all ESG risks map back to our principal risk of “ESG strategy and performance” to ensure we have adequate oversight and governance in identifying, managing, and reporting such risks, mitigations and control effectiveness.
Our principal risks
Specific focus on prioritised topics such as climate change are referenced in Wood’s Annual Report and Accounts. More information on Wood’s risk management framework and principal risks is available in our annual report and accounts
Stakeholder engagement
The long-term success of our business depends upon our ability to effectively listen and engage with all our key stakeholders. Giving our stakeholders a voice in Wood’s strategic direction ensures we continue to deliver sustainable growth and return value to our business and those we impact. We determine our key stakeholders to be our employees, our clients and investors.
Responding to the growing ESG and sustainability agenda our focus on stakeholder engagement is a vital component of our sustainability programme and its continual development and evolution.
Read more our efforts on stakeholder engagement.
