Sustainability
The business continued to make progress in Environmental, Social and Governance (“ESG”) matters, developing a new sustainability strategy with the enthusiastic support of our wide ranging stakeholder groups working together with external sustainability consultants and completing a materiality assessment.
Our approach to sustainability has always been about doing the right thing for our business, our stakeholders and wider society. As one of the largest distributors of specialist AV equipment globally, we understand the unique role we play in the sector, both supporting our customers to meet their own sustainability ambitions and using our voice to advocate for more sustainable ways of working across the wider AV industry.
Midwich Sustainability Strategy Focus Areas
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Our people and giving back
To care about our team and local community. Developing skills and diverse talent that will support our business and sector, now and in the future.
Strategic priority
Our employees are core to everything we do, and we want them to be fully engaged with the Group and feel a strong sense of belonging and ownership. Supporting our team, through an environment that helps them flourish is part of our purpose, and it is critical to our long-term success as a business. This is delivered through continued involvement in our communities and to develop the skills of our people providing a broader talent pool to meet the needs of our business and sector, now and in the future.
Focus areas
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Inclusivity
Our business sits at the heart of the AV industry, and it is our people and their relationships with our multiple stakeholders that drive our results. The materiality assessment reinforced what we’ve always known: A feeling of inclusivity and belonging by our team members is an important factor
in our long-term sustainability. The Group’s rapid growth over the last few years combined with the shift to hybrid working has presented numerous challenges with respect to maintaining groupwide engagement which have actively addressed, and our greater scale and diversity brings opportunities to invest in our teams as well as creating more fulfilling careers.
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Training and development
We are committed to developing our team members and allowing them to build their careers within the Group. We understand that if our people understand their purpose and responsibilities and are given the right training and tools they will perform better. We value autonomy and personal
responsibility and strive to maintain a merit-based culture.Across the Group we offer a mix of structured training, leadership development and coaching. Our merit-based approach recognises success through both our rewards process and promotion. The rapid growth of the Group allows us to set stretching and rewarding goals for people and provide them with opportunities to try new things both in the UK and, increasingly, overseas.
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Employee wellbeing
Looking after our team members is critical to our business performance, but more importantly is deeply embedded in our values. We want Midwich to be an engaging, rewarding and fun place to work. Over the last few years, we have seen an increasing convergence of personal and work time. As a leading AV company, we have adopted hybrid working across the Group. This provides more flexibility to our teams and ensures that we prioritise productivity vs time in the office.
We’re also conscious of the current pressures on both mental health and from cost-of-living increases. We have responded to both with targeted initiatives and employee benefits. We have also invested in dedicated resources to proactively support our teams around the world.
As a distributor, we are at the centre of the AV channel and we have adopted a similar model with respect to the communities we operate in. The Midwich Group supports an array of local, national and international charities. We recognise the importance of giving back to the communities
where we operate and the value this provides to the charities and to our employees, who love to give back.
Our commitment
We will continue to champion engagement across the Group, encouraging behaviours that align with our values. Our training and development will ensure people feel comfortable and secure in their roles, are treated respectfully and can operate with autonomy. We will value inclusivity and recognise performance through both our reward and career development programmes. We will also continue to encourage employee share ownership across the Group.
We will prioritise employee wellbeing, adapting to the changing social and economic backdrop. We will also continue to support the communities where we operate.Measures of success
- Engagement survey results
- Employee share ownership
- Average length of service
- Charitable contributions
- Community volunteering
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Our environmental performance
To manage and reduce emissions and energy consumption in our own business and influence key impacts in our supply chain.
Strategic priority
Our primary goal is to manage and reduce our carbon emissions and energy consumption in our own business. We want to do the right thing for the long-term sustainability of the environment, and we will do this through a focus on improving our facilities and logistics activities.
We committed to creating internal teams to champion being more environmentally conscious. In 2021, under the direction of a qualified sustainability expert, we established an internal team to develop and support our plans to reduce our CO2 emissions.
This team is supported by Climate Partner GmbH, a specialist carbon reduction consultant.We also committed to reducing our UK SECR intensity ratio in the year and increasing our percentage of low emission vehicles in the UK fleet. We achieved both targets with a 10% decline in our intensity ratio and an increase in the proportion of low emission vehicles1 to 27% (2020: 8%). In addition, the Group companies continue to champion the following initiatives: encouraging employees to come to work by cycle, eliminating single-use plastics, engaging with renewable energy suppliers, using LED
lights in our offices, using recycled paper products and moving to electric vehicles where it is viable to do so.We continue to support many initiatives across the Group designed to be embedded in our culture and change our mentality to ‘sustainability for the future’.
Our commitments on environmental performance
In the year ahead we will complete our analysis of our baseline carbon data for the Group and set stretching carbon reduction goals. From next year’s annual report, the Group will incorporate TCFD aligned reporting. We will make investments that both support our carbon reduction goals and improve our working environment.
Measures of success
- Inclusion of TCFD aligned reporting (2023 annual report)
- Establishment of carbon reduction targets
- Further progress to reduce intensity ratios
- A greater proportion of energy from renewables
- Committed time to local conservation projects
Tree planting
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Our solutions
To promote AV solutions that help people to communicate, collaborate and work more efficiently.
Strategic priority
Our goal is to champion the use of AV technology and solutions to deliver positive benefits to both our customers and wider society.
As the AV industry evolves, more creative uses of technology are emerging. We believe that our teams, working as part of the wider AV ecosystem, can leverage technology to enhance people’s lives, through the quality of communication, and substitute high emission travel for lower emission remote experiences that support inclusion. We believe that AV brings flexibility and innovation to companies and allows employees greater choice in how and where they live and work.
Our commitments
In the year ahead we will continue to invest in our specialist teams and experience centres to be able to demonstrate the creative solutions that AV can deliver.
This is where we are seeing technological advancements begin to offer sustainability benefits through new ways of working. We will continue to work with our vendor brands and customers, proactively engaging in discussion on sustainability improvements as part of their new product development, such as ‘eco modes’.
In addition, we will champion AV channel education for sustainable best practice when proposing technology as part of a solution and by delivering key notes at leading industry events on topics aligned to sustainability, where installers and content creators gather ideas to adapt to building a more sustainable offering to their end user clients.
Measures of success
- Macroeconomic statistics for commuting time/mileage
- Customer/end user feedback
- Content creation to support the AV channel with sustainability
Industry event - sharing expertise
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Our channel
To support a sustainable value chain to ensure its long-term success and maximise collective benefit.
Strategic priority
Our goal is to support a sustainable value chain to ensure the long-term success of our business and, by working with our vendors, customers and end users, influence and support their environmental goals. Many of our global vendors are large corporations who have their own ambitious plans to reduce their environmental impact.
We believe that in time the AV industry will converge on a set of principles to reduce carbon emissions and other environmental impacts. Whilst this area of our sustainability strategy is not as well advanced, we are committed to learning and growing to understand how we can use our position in the value chain to leverage technology towards a more circular economy.
Our comittments
Continuing to work with industry bodies and leading experts to play our part in the future formulation of channel sustainability. This coming year, the AVIXA Sustainability Task Force is about research and understanding, looking into the feasibility of what can be done and we commit to continuing to be a part of this.
Our long-standing relationships with partners throughout the AV channel provides us with the perfect opportunity to influence, therefore our commitment will be to continue to involve ourselves and add value on sustainability in the channel.
We will continue to support the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment recycling (“WEEE”) regulations and similar environmental programmes in other geographies.
Measures of success
- Number of key vendors with a net zero commitment
- Customer/end user feedback
- Time invested with AVIXA
Sharing expertise with The Channel