News article
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It’s a wrap for the Million Makers Challenge
Strong and lasting relationships
We care about the people and places we impact. Aspiring to be a trusted community partner, we seek to build strong and lasting relationships in all that we achieve as Team Wood.
Supporting our communities
Creating shared value in aligning business goals to local stakeholder needs, our contribution to local communities aspires to create sustainable growth, protect our shared environment and improve the lives of the people we touch.
Guided by our values, we are committed to fostering community relationships built on mutual trust, respect and a shared ambition towards sustainable development.
Canada Indigenous relations
Wood is committed to building positive and mutually beneficial relationships with Indigenous communities.
We acknowledge that the engineering, procurement and construction services we provide clients we work with may lie within traditional Indigenous territory. We respect the culture, rights and interests of Indigenous peoples and their land.
How is this fundemental to our business
We are part of the communities we live in, both as individuals and as Wood. By building strong and lasting relationships, we play an important role in contributing to local economies and the social fabric of our shared communities. A successful community investment programme can help to establish mutually beneficial relationships between a company and its local stakeholders, delivering long-term improvements to both people and sustainable development.
With growing stakeholder expectation, companies are increasingly moving away from ad-hoc philanthropic activities to strategic community investment plans that emphasis the ‘shared value’ of aligning business goals with local stakeholder needs. With ten years left in meeting the UN Global 2030 agenda, companies face increasing pressure to set ambitious corporate targets that accelerate integration of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) into core business management; unlocking business value, building business resilience and enabling long-term inclusive growth.
We recognise our role extends beyond our philanthropic donations, to how we show up in the communities we are a part of.
Setting the expectation within our code of conduct, we welcome the opportunity to partner with our communities whilst ensuring our commitments are transparent, ethical and always in alignment with our values. Demonstrating Care, Commitment and Courage to show up in our shared communities.
Wood’s community investment programme is governed by our Community Investment Committee, this includes management of corporate charitable donations on behalf of Wood and stewardship and communication of our community investment target. The committee is administered by the Sustainability Team and includes cross-business representation. In addition, the committee provides overview and support towards business unit strategic plans to ensure alignment to group-wide strategy.
As a community partner we commit to:
Understand
- Our community impact and opportunities
- Our key stakeholders
- Local heritage and context around human rights
Engage
- With key stakeholders and develop, where possible, local procurement plans
- With clear communication, including methods of reporting
- On local development and investment plans
Evolve
- The effectiveness of plans and community perception
- How we review and respond to community incidents
- How we benchmark our performance, monitor and evaluate
In 2021, Wood announced a series of sustainability goals. In support of our communities, we commit to give our time, resources and funding to contribute $10 million to our global causes by 2030.
Based not only on charitable giving, our goal will deliver greater transparency on Wood’s true impact to our global causes by including the monetary equivalent of our time and resource contributions, on both a voluntary and contractual basis. Our efforts will be tracked from a 2020 baseline, as we seek to improve transparency and reporting across Wood on our community efforts.
We recognise our role extends beyond our philanthropic donations. We also value the time and energy we give to support our shared communities where we live and work. Wood’s community investment programme consists of three strategic pillars: matching our employee fundraising efforts, strategically uniting our business around a single global cause and volunteering our time.
Employee Matched Funding
Wood’s central charitable fund matches employee fundraising efforts for personal choice charities. Every day, across our global business our people are showing commitment and courage to care for the communities we share. Through the funds we raise we are helping to support a wide range of charities and organisations that are important to each of us, our colleagues and our local community. We believe these endeavours to lift others up and create new possibilities, should be recognised; our employee matched funding programme supports employee’s personal choice charities that in turn helps us individually make a difference.
Our Global Cause
Chosen by our employees and aligned to UN SDG 4 on Quality Education, our global cause unites our people. Demonstrating our contribution to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in 2018 our people chose education as Wood’s Global Cause, in support of SDG 4 and quality education. Choosing to support a cause, as opposed to a singular cause, we offer our people the flexibility to create impactful change against prioritised issues in their local community, whilst staying connected to the wider Wood collective efforts. Wood’s focus on education as our global cause will be subject to periodic review and validation by our employees over time, for this reason our target of $10 million by 2030 does not intentionally reference education, with the view that this may change over the target period.
Volunteering
Volunteering our time, knowledge and expertise to show up in our communities. Through volunteering our time and energy to the issues important to our shared communities, we continue to demonstrate care and commitment towards the people and the environment we impact.
To learn more about our community investment activities and progress in the year, read our latest Annual Report and Accounts and ESG data sheet.
