With 35,000 employees and projects in more than 60 countries, Wood plc is a leader in consulting and engineering across energy and the built environment. A 25-year veteran of the company, President of Sustainability, Linzie Forrester is on a mission to embed Building Responsibly’s Worker Welfare Principles into the supply chain, and ensure they become the Gold Standard for organisations everywhere.
Linzie Forrester, President of Sustainability, Wood plc
Tell us about your role at Wood.
Wood created a C-suite role for sustainability with the objective of ensuring the principles of sustainable development run through the heart of the business. I’m a passionate advocate of building sustainability in what we do and how we do it. Previously, I was Wood’s Head of Health, Safety and Environment which gave me a great opportunity to initiate a global sustainability approach for the company. As our programme grew, Wood created a new role enabling me to concentrate on our Sustainability Programme. My vision is for us to stop talking about sustainability because it is robustly embedded into everything we do.
Wood is one of the founding members of Building Responsibly (BR). How did that come about?
It goes back a few years when the old AMEC business started looking at human rights. We realised this was one of our weaker areas in terms of management attention. We had a significant migrant workforce, particularly in the Middle East where the protections offered by employment law were not as strong as we’d like at the time. We knew that our peers were also wrestling with similar issues and our concern turned into action. That’s really where the idea for Building Responsibly came from – a need to embed strong workers’ rights at grassroots levels across all of our businesses, particularly in geographies where there is poor protection for folks.
What was the key driver to take action?
We knew there was a lot more we could be doing to deal with our risk but also to provide an opportunity for people to want to work for our company because they know they’ll be respected and will have great working and living conditions. From a moral perspective treating people fairly and with dignity is the right thing to do. But it’s also good for business. In our market, there’s a lot of competition for workforce so we wanted to create an environment that made it clear that we look after you.
With a plethora of human rights related standards, such as International Labour Organization (ILO) and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). So, we needed to find a straightforward way to articulate expectations on human rights and workers’ rights. If I said to you, ‘we uphold the universal declaration of human rights’ it’s hard to understand what that means. But if you can articulate it in ten sentences, you can start to say, ‘this is what we expect’. We were not the only folks looking for that, so that’s kind of where it all started for BR.
So, what sort of challenges and pressures are you trying to address with your BR peers?
There were some pretty horrifying stories coming out of the construction and modernisation of Dubai about the treatment of migrant workers. This catalysed debate about how we work together to develop common standards and drive a level playing field for the industry.
The Modern Slavery Act was on the horizon, and it was clear that we needed to up our game on the management of modern slavery and human trafficking. But there was also an opportunity to do more than manage risk. We need to take that opportunity. We could influence many elements tied to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, including health, welfare, ethics and safety which could improve worker relationships and our reputation.
We set out to create a much more inclusive environment, with minimum standards to give people good quality of care. And it started by taking a look at our risk profile, and wanting to find opportunities to improve.
So, addressing workers’ rights is not simply about doing the right thing. It’s a business opportunity, to attract great people because they want to work for a company that’s going to look after them?
Exactly. We might not have had criminal or civil liability issues, but there were definitely risks to manage, and we needed to manage them well. That’s where it starts; those are the basics. But then, when you dig a bit deeper, you can see real opportunity. Social sustainable development is about being fair and just, and we have an opportunity to change the dial in how we look after the most vulnerable in our society.
We want to give our clients a quality product, and deliver it in a way that is sustainable, looking after our people, communities as well as the environment. We want to make a profit but not at any cost. That means looking after everybody who is part of that value chain. We’ve eliminated or significantly reduced the risk of worker welfare issues within our direct nexus. So the obvious next choice is to go down to your supply chain. That’s what we’re doing at the moment. It’s not easy, it’s a journey and it’s a worthwhile one.
What have been the big ‘wins’ for BR and its members in the last two years?
We’re working on long term aims. These help us to articulate our aims and objectives as an organisation which will help us to grow. It’s about creating a network that will take the BR Principles to the next level, so that we can communicate and reach out to even more people.
I’m proud of the guidance we created around each principle. This was a true collaboration and elaborates on what ‘good’ looks like. It is so important to support businesses in getting to a better place through the Worker Welfare principles.
Ultimately, I want us to be the gold standard for worker welfare. And I want us to be able to evolve that, to tackle things like wage discrimination, for example – evolving the principles to stay relevant to all members.
What do you value most about being part of Building Responsibly?
I like that we aim to take a leadership position in this space. We are an industry reaching out and doing this ourselves, rather than being pushed into it. I’m proud that we are driving forward an area of sustainable development that can sometimes get overlooked in our industry.
A lot of attention is focused on climate change – but that is not the only sustainability issue. The BR Principles has been very effective at raising the issue of human rights because it’s really important. It’s a great way of starting conversations with our senior management team about human rights. It’s also been a really good way to engage with our stakeholders, and to benchmark what a minimum standard should look like.
So, how are you using the BR Principles internally?
We’ve integrated the BR Worker Welfare Principles where we have direct nexus – within our governance system for our human resources, policies and procedures.
We’ve also embedded them into our supply chain, and we are taking a tiered approach. We are asking our Tier 1 suppliers – where we have the greatest spend – to implement the Principles. We changed our Supplier Code of Conduct to reflect this and, ultimately, we want everyone in our value chain to be a BR Worker Welfare supporter.
We’ve trained all of our global supply chain operatives who do all the procurement for the business, so it’s now starting to roll out throughout the organisation.
We’ve made a public declaration that by 2025, all of our labour suppliers will be compliant with the BR Principles, or we won’t use them. And then, by 2030, it will impact the whole of the supply chain. We have a vested interest in the success of BR, and we are committed to improving Worker Welfare globally.
Is it hard to get internal buy-in?
It’s not sustainable to exploit folks and it’s not right morally. From a business point of view do you know how much reputation impacts cost? They are huge. I guess I’m fortunate. Our leaders ‘get it’ so when we explain the issue now, the risks, and most importantly, the opportunities are clear and it’s not hard to get buy-in.
What else would you like BR to focus on in the next couple of years?
We’ve created a framework for BR members setting out minimum expectations and what we should be aiming for, long term. I want the BR Worker Welfare Principles to be recognised as the Gold Standard by multinationals and international organizations, such as the United Nations. But I also want us to continue to evolve and stay relevant. Worker welfare needs so much more attention.
And is that achievable?
Yes, it is. But we need to be able to grow the membership and we need to do a lot more stakeholder engagement with external organizations. Originally, we touched the lives of our own company workforce and now we influence over a million people. What if we could influence a billion or more!
You’ve got plenty on your plate. So, what's the focus in the next year?
Embedding and growing the uptake of the BR Principles in our supply chain is going to be the greatest focus. We have to meet our 2025 target and that’s going to take an awful lot of angst, auditing, assurance work and validation so ensure we are where we think we are. And, of course, it’s never-ending because a supply chain is dynamic.