Environmental, Social & Governance
A message from our CEO
Simbec-Orion has a strong heritage, having been established nearly 50 years ago. Responding to the evolving needs of our clients has made us the organisation we are today.
How we continue to sustainably develop our business is a crucial element of the strategic vision for our company. We continue to change the way we think, and work, to better address our impact on the world around us. We are now focussed on improving how we measure and disclose our impact and reduce our carbon intensity.
We remain agile and proactive to emerging industry trends and encourage all of our employees to continue to be forward-thinking.
Fabrice Chartier, Group CEO
Four pillars
We monitor our performance over time with a clear focus on continuous improvement. We use metrics and action plans to reduce risk in our organisation and continue to make steps forward to proactively contribute to a more sustainable future.
The following four pillars provides our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) framework:
- Principles of Governance
- Planet
- People
- Prosperity
Principles of Governance
Corporate Governance
Our Corporate Governance is guided by our Purpose, Vision, Mission and have assigned a member of our Board to lead on Environmental, Social and Governance Values
Formal ESG Metrics are collated and reported against our four pillars. Metrics are in line with the European Union’s (EUs) Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation (SFDR).
We perform an annual ESG review to evaluate our ESG status, create an annual ESG Action plan and produce an Annual Sustainability Report. We will continue to increase stakeholder engagement in 2024.
We have comprehensive procedures for Vendor Assessment and Management that are being updated to include includes ESG related questions. This process will be further enhanced with the development of a Code of Conduct for all our suppliers in 2024.
Information systems underpin our activities and we are fully committed to maintaining Information Security by continuing to invest in e-systems, digitalising and protecting both our data and our client’s data.
Planet
Sustainability
We are taking action for a more sustainable future and to help protect our planet.
We remain committed to fully understanding our GHG emissions and reducing our footprint. We are Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon neutral, having offset our Scope 1 and Scope 2 carbon emissions in both 2022 and 2023 and are committed to performing this annually. We have developed a carbon footprint reduction plan and we are setting formal GHG reduction targets to reach net zero by 2050.
We are investing in technology and systems to enable us to continue moving toward a paperless environment.
We remain committed to fully understanding our GHG emissions and reducing our footprint.
We have a specific objective of improving the efficiency of our use of natural resources through improvements in which we use energy at our UK headquarters. Initiative include use of more efficient equipment as we upgrade, minimising the amount of waste to landfill, re-use and recycling, and purchasing sustainable materials and goods designed to last.
We are supporting a shift to sustainable transport. In the UK we remain committed to enabling employees to transition to low-carbon personal transport. We continue to offer our cycle scheme (an incentive to further improve energy and health), and now also offer an electric car scheme. and have installed electric bike charge points at our headquarters in Wales.
People
Health & Wellbeing
As a CRO specialised in oncology, rare and orphan diseases and more generally indications with high medical need, through clinical research projects, we aim to improve patient’s lives.
Our purpose is to partner with our clients to develop more effective therapies for patients and in doing so contribute to improvement in global health.
We are a people business. We understand the importance of having skilled, competent and empowered people who are happy and feel valued.
We are committed to encouraging equality, diversity and inclusion among our workforce.
We perform an annual employee engagement survey and benchmark our data against
industry data (Benchmarks: UK, R&D Industry and Organisations in transition).
We ensure we take action and retain a focus on ongoing improvement as a result of the feedback we receive.
Prosperity
Simbec-Orion contributes to sustainable economic growth through our business growth and the creation of stable well-paid jobs, performing meaningful work. We are committed to setting sustainable growth-orientated business goals that benefit our employees, our suppliers and our customers and contribute to the local and global economy.
We aim to provide a rewarding and engaging working environment with meaningful work. We are proud to be a Living Wage employer in the UK. The real Living Wage is the UK wage rate based on the cost of living, which is voluntarily paid by UK businesses who believe their staff deserve a wage that meets everyday needs.
We strive to positively impact the communities in which we operate and ensure a strong social focus where we seek to add value to society alongside our main business operations. We do this by fostering links with the colleges and universities local to our headquarters in Wales, UK to support education and awareness of the clinical research industry and provide STEM-related opportunities such as work experience and Year in Industry placements.
Volunteering can make a significant difference to others and the sense of achievement can have positive benefits to health also. We encourage employees to volunteer in our local communities in the UK and enable this through providing one day a year to undertake volunteering activities in UK charities and not-for-profit organizations
A full list of our Corporate Polices, including those under development, may be found here
