Our Sustainability Strategy is designed to maximise our positive impact and minimise our environmental footprint. During 2021, we future-proofed our purpose-driven learning and media businesses through various sustainability actions. This article summarises the highlights of the year. You can learn more on our sustainability performance from the Annual Report 2021, published on 1 March.
We halved the GHG emission of our own operations
Sanoma aims to reach carbon neutrality by 2030 both in its own operations and in the value chain. In 2021, the greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) from Sanoma’s own operations declined by 54%. The decline mainly resulted from moving to carbon neutral electricity in printing facilities and offices in Finland.
All-time-high response rate of 90 % in Employee Engagement Survey
Sanoma has over 5,000 experts working in 11 countries throughout Europe. Engaging with employees is an essential part of developing Sanoma as a great workplace. In the latest Employee Engagement Survey, we reached an excellent response rate of 90%. The Employee Engagement Index was 7.3, being above the European benchmark of 7.1.
Gender-balanced management
An important part in creating a great workplace is a culture where everyone feels welcomed as they are. Sanoma aims to promote a culture where gender plays no role and there is wide diversity going further than just gender, while we do follow and report the number of women and men in managerial roles. The gender diversity of Sanoma’s management was already on a good level with 39% of directors or senior managers being women. We continue to develop diversity and inclusion further in the coming years, and it will be one our key focus areas in 2022.
Improved ESG ratings reflect our strong sustainability actions and transparent reporting
As a result of the launch of the Sustainability Strategy in March 2021 and increased transparency in sustainability reporting, Sanoma’s scores in the key ESG ratings MSCI (AA), ISS (C-) and Sustainalytics (9.8) improved. In the CDP Climate Change and the CDP Forest assessments Sanoma’s score improved to B from earlier D.
UN Global Compact and SBTi: Commitments to strengthen our sustainability progress
In May 2021, Sanoma became a signatory of the United Nations (UN) Global Compact, world’s largest corporate sustainability initiative. Sanoma’s Code of Conduct encompasses the Ten Principles of the UN Global Compact on human rights, labour, environment and anti-corruption and our Sustainability Strategy supports the UN Agenda 2030. In June, Sanoma committed to setting emission reduction targets aligned with the Science Based Target initiative’s (SBTi) criteria. By committing to SBTi Sanoma wants to future-proof its growth strategy and ensure its plans for carbon reduction limit the global warming in line with the Paris Agreement.
Impact quantified: Sanoma’s business has a highly positive net impact
Sanoma’s net impact was quantified with the Upright net impact modelling tool that is based on artificial intelligence and scientific articles. The analysis confirmed that Sanoma’s largest positive impact comes from distribution of knowledge in the form of journalism, news media and learning materials. Sanoma received a net impact rating of AA+ (Excellent+), which summarises the positive and negative impacts created by Sanoma’s business on society, knowledge, human health, and the environment.
Sustainability Report 2021 summarises Sanoma’s strategy in action
Sanoma’s Sustainability Report 2021 was published on 1 March 2022 as a part of the Annual Report 2021. It is prepared in accordance to the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) standards and has a limited external assurance. For the first time, we also report according to the Sustainability Accounting Standard Board’s (SASB) guidelines for the Media & Entertainment, Advertising & Marketing and Education sectors and describe the impacts of climate change on our business using the Task Force on Climate-related Financial disclosure (TCFD) framework.
To learn more, see Annual Report 2021
