Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023
Responsible Business
RESPONSIBLE BUSINESS STRATEGY
Our Responsible Business Strategy sets out medium-term objectives for the business, which we will aim to achieve by the end of 2025.
Our Material Issues
1
Employee Health and Wellbeing
What are the risks?
We recognise the increasing pressure that our society faces and the challenges that poor physical and mental health pose. Without strategic intervention, we face the risk of increased employee absence and burnout negatively impacting our productivity and workplace culture.
Where do we see opportunities?
Our Health and Wellbeing Strategy aims to embed a collaborative relationship between the Group and our people to promote a positive and open culture relating to wellbeing. We aspire to embed a culture of people-led leadership and review wellbeing at all levels of our business to ensure that we continue to invest in and protect our greatest asset – our people. Taking this approach provides us with the opportunity to evolve our workplace culture and attract a broader range of diverse talent to our business.
2
Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI)
What are the risks?
The built environment sector has traditionally struggled to attract, retain, and progress a diverse pool of talent. Continuing failure to do so poses a risk of increased skills gaps (particularly in operational roles) exacerbated by an ageing workforce, a restricted workplace culture, and limited opportunities for growth,
Where do we see opportunities?
Our EDI Steering Group works closely with our senior management to collate feedback and review and implement initiatives aimed at ensuring Henry Boot is a welcoming, accessible and diverse workplace. Ongoing reviews of our recruitment processes and employee data are enabling us to identify areas for improvement and informing programmes to continue to engage with diverse talent. Taking this approach presents an opportunity to strengthen our business resilience, support our growth aspirations, and better represent the communities we serve’.
3
Achieving our Net Zero Carbon (NZC) Target
What are the risks?
As our business aspires to grow and increase productivity, there is a risk that our direct GHG emissions could rise.
Where do we see opportunities?
Our Group Climate Forum reports to our senior management team and aims to share knowledge and collaborate to reduce our direct GHG emissions. We continue to adapt our approach to reduce our impact and, in doing so, offer schemes that meet market and investor demand as well as attract talent to work for our business.
4
Education Engagement
What are the risks?
It is increasingly difficult to attract diverse talent (particularly in operational roles) and a failure to do so could lead to skills gaps and reduced productivity and growth.
Where do we see opportunities?
Our Group invests significant amounts of time and resources into providing leading careers education to a broad range of learners. We frequently engage and collaborate with education leaders and specialists to identify where we can create the greatest impact and aspire to create excitement about the opportunities in our business and industry.
5
Community Investment
What are the risks?
We recognise the increasing challenges that our communities face as a result of the legacy of COVID, cost of living crisis and rising interest rates. Social Value continues to be an important consideration for the public sector when awarding work and a failure to demonstrate authentic investment and credentials risks the ability to win bids.
Where do we see opportunities?
We are well underway to achieve our medium term target of generating £1 million of value for our community partners. We continue to invest significant funds, resources and time to create long lasting and genuine social value in the communities where we work. A collaborative approach enables us to showcase a sincere commitment and understand the issues our communities face. As a result we are well regarded for our social value performance.
6
Responsible Consumption and Nature Stewardship
What are the risks?
Adapting to climate change goes beyond just reducing GHG emissions and also accounts for how businesses use resources and protect the natural world. We rely on the natural world to produce many of the materials required for our buildings and a failure to limit our consumption and protect natural habitats could affect our ability to procure the materials we require and remain compliant with evolving legislative and regulatory demands.
Where do we see opportunities?
Our pledge to develop and implement a Nature Stewardship Strategy in 2024 demonstrates our commitment to protecting the habitats where we work and source our materials. We continue to engage partners and our supply chain to reduce our consumption of materials and utilise internal subject matter and external experts to shape our approach to ensure it is ambitious and collaborative.
Our strategy is to embed ESG into our commercial decision making
Objectives
2025 Target
Develop and deliver a Group-wide Health and Wellbeing Strategy with a range of activities and resources available to all.
2023 Performance
The Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Programme was launched to the Group in February 2023 with a range of resources, activities and guidance delivered throughout 2023 including activities and case studies on mental health, neurodiversity, male health, the menopause, physical fitness, and pregnancy loss.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Encourage greater levels of gender diversity in our workforce and increase gender representation in management positions with 30% of workforce and line managers being female.
2023 Performance
We have made strong progress in overall female representation of our overall workforce, which has increased to 28% (25% in 2022).
Progress in increasing female representation of our management has aligned at 28% (24% in 2022).
2025 Target
Reduce our gender pay gap to 20% (28% in 2020)
2023 Performance
Our 2023 gender pay gap was 20.98% (21.43% in 2022).
2025 Target
Begin reporting on our ethnicity pay gap and set a target to encourage greater ethnic diversity in our workforce.
2023 Performance
We have engaged commercial partners to review ethnic pay gap reporting and are undertaking the required analysis of our employee data to begin reporting and establish a target to increase our ethnic diversity in 2024.
2025 Target
Deliver EDI training to 100% of our people.
2023 Performance
We delivered expert-led EDI training to the majority of our workforce in 2022 and all new employees must complete a mandatory EDI e-learning module as part of our onboarding process. Our EDI Steering Group is currently reviewing our EDI training programme to ensure that we can deliver engaging and practical training for our people.
2025 Target
Introduce best practice recruitment processes and reverse mentoring programmes, combined with an annual benchmarking and auditing process to ensure progress against targets.
2023 Performance
Our EDI Steering Group and HR team are collaborating to introduce new recruitment processes and a reverse mentoring programme in 2024. We continually review our workforce data and are introducing measures to ensure it is robust and accurate to establish further targets and introduce new diversity initiatives.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Introduce ESG related targets for all senior management remuneration.
2023 Performance
All members of our Executive Committee have ESG related targets incorporated into their performance review.
2025 Target
Ensure that all Group Pension Schemes incorporate ESG factors in investment decisions and that our people are well informed about their investment choices.
2023 Performance
ISIO, our pension scheme manager, conducts thorough reviews of ESG capabilities and reports performance against their ESG Manager Review Framework. The Group regularly shares information about pensions with employees.
Aligned UN SDGs
Objectives
2025 Target
Contribute £1,000,000 of financial (and equivalent) value to our charitable partners (including donations of funds, resources, sponsorship and pro-bono support).
2023 Performance
We contributed over £225,000 to a range of our charitable and community partners including financial donations and sponsorship, employee fundraising, and expertise, time and resources and services provided pro bono.
2025 Target
Develop long term strategic partnerships both nationally and regionally, and align all Group charitable giving with our Charitable Giving Pillars – for maximum impact.
2023 Performance
We concluded the relationship with our Group Charity Partner Place2Be having contributed over £55,000 to support their vital work. We also continued to develop existing and new strategic charity partnerships and to align all charitable donations with our Charitable Giving Pillars.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Contribute 7,500 volunteering hours across our Group to a range of community, charity and education projects.
2023 Performance
We contributed over 3,000 volunteering hours to a wide range of charitable, community, and education partners.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Engage 5,000 learners through careers initiatives, curriculum-focused activity, work experience, and mentoring.
2023 Performance
We engaged approximately 2,280 learners through a wide range of careers education activity and initiatives including work experience, site visits, career sessions and mentoring.
2025 Target
Offer 200 entry-level employment opportunities or work experience placements with a focus on those who traditionally struggle to access opportunities.
2023 Performance
We offered 22 work experience placements and 10 entry level employment positions. We engaged a range of education partners to share information about entry routes (including apprenticeships) with learners who traditionally struggle to access careers education.
2025 Target
Develop and deliver an Education Engagement Strategy to consolidate and enhance our support and collaboration with education partners, to create significant impact for learners and to incorporate social and environmental responsibility into our education programmes.
2023 Performance
We undertook extensive engagement with education and community partners to develop an understanding of their needs and aspirations across the areas in which we work. Additional engagement was undertaken with our people to review the education support currently provided. The feedback and learnings from this engagement have been incorporated into our Early Careers Strategy, which has been approved by senior management for implementation in 2024.
Aligned UN SDGs
Objectives
2025 Target
Develop and deliver a Group-wide Health and Wellbeing Strategy with a range of activities and resources available to all.
2023 Performance
The Health and Wellbeing Strategy and Programme was launched to the Group in February 2023 with a range of resources, activities and guidance delivered throughout 2023 including activities and case studies on mental health, neurodiversity, male health, the menopause, physical fitness, and pregnancy loss.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Cut avoidable waste by 99% for all our construction sites (100% by 2030).
2023 Performance
In 2023, 99% of avoidable waste was achieved on Henry Boot Construction’s sites.
2025 Target
Reduce consumption of avoidable plastic by 50% and undertake Group-wide waste and water monitoring to establish reduction targets.
2023 Performance
We are engaging with a number of waste management providers to assist the Group to baseline our use of plastic and creation of waste, with a Waste Management Plan due for implementation in 2024.
2025 Target
Introduce a Group-wide Sustainable Supply Chain Standard to support supply chain collaboration and innovation.
2023 Performance
Procurement specialists from across the Group are represented on the Group Climate Forum and will be supporting the development of our forthcoming Sustainable Supply Chain Standard.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Collaborate with commercial partners to achieve biodiversity net gains (BNG) on our projects and enhance and preserve natural environments where we work.
2023 Performance
We continue to collaborate closely with our customers, supply chain and commercial partners to deliver BNG effectively on our schemes and to share knowledge and solutions. Our Nature Stewardship Strategy will be developed and published in 2024.
2025 Target
Deliver nature stewardship training to 100% of our people.
2023 Performance
Teams from the business attended a biodiversity seminar with specialist industry speakers. A broader range of training and education will be provided across the Group in 2024.
Aligned UN SDGs
Objectives
2025 Target
Pay all of our suppliers the real living wage and secure accreditation with the Living Wage Foundation.
2023 Performance
The Living Wage Foundation has been engaged and an internal review is being undertaken of the requirements to secure membership.
2025 Target
Maintain best practice to ensure our sites and supply chain are modern slavery free.
2023 Performance
Best practice is maintained by the Group’s Modern Slavery Policy (which is routinely reviewed) and engagement with our supply chain.
2025 Target
Provide resources and support to enable our supply chain to support the objectives of this strategy.
2023 Performance
A range of support has been offered to our supply chain including toolbox talks, bespoke mental health awareness information from the Lighthouse Charity, and guidance on regulations and best practice. We continue to provide bespoke and extensive support to our sub-contractors to provide them with support during turbulent market conditions.
Aligned UN SDGs
2025 Target
Engage and collaborate with our partners to generate the highest possible social value for our community and charity partners.
2023 Performance
We have routinely engaged with our commercial partners and supply chain to collaborate on delivering significant social value and employment and skills opportunities in alignment with commercial schemes and community partnerships.
2025 Target
Engage key partners to create a more diverse and inclusive built environment sector and form businessled partnerships to improve EDI.
2023 Performance
We continue to engage with membership organisations (including the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) and Business in the Community (BITC)) on EDI and engage other members to share knowledge and best practice. We were proud to be a founding member of the BITC EDI Yorkshire and Humber Steering Group.
2025 Target
Collaborate with all our partners to reduce our environmental impact.
This will include collaborating with business coalitions and membership organisations, and providing access to environmental training and resources for our suppliers.
2023 Performance
We continue to engage with membership organisations (including Yorkshire Climate Action Coalition) to share knowledge and best practice. We are contributory members of the UK Green Building Council (UKGBC) and work closely with their team to educate and inform our people and partners on the latest sector environmental developments. We routinely collaborate with our supply chain and professional partners across all areas of commercial operations to identify opportunities to protect the environment and support the aspirations of our NZC Framework.
Aligned UN SDGs
Our Purpose is to empower and develop our people to create long-term value and sustainable growth for our stakeholders.
Our strategy is shaped by four key strategic pillars and focuses on three long term markets:
Safety and Environment
Safety and environment We aim to be the safest place to work in our markets and be respectful to our environment
People
Grow PBT by increasing capital employed to £500m by investing in our three key markets
Growth
Adopt emerging working practices, investing and collaborating to deliver our operational targets
Delivery
Open, progressive, high performing business governed by clear objectives which engage diverse range of talent
Our Ambitions will be delivered by our people working closely with our partners – delivering collaborative solutions with real impact.
Our Values will underpin and align everything we do.
Our Strategy is aligned to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals that we and our stakeholders feel our business can most positively impact