We take sustainability extremely seriously across the nGAGE family: conducting ourselves ethically, safeguarding labour and human rights and taking environmental care.

Building a sustainable approach to business is at the heart of the nGAGE Group strategy. We create a fulfilling environment for our people to work in and instill a belief in doing recruitment the right way. We develop a genuinely passionate group of people who want to look after our candidates and clients for the long-term.

Our people take an active role in developing their careers, growing the business across the globe, taking the unique nGAGE culture with them. Their passion extends beyond the business to supporting the communities we work in today. Providing the career path into a management position is something we excel at. This benefits us by propagating our unique culture and preserving it for us.

Our entrepreneurial spirit and values of integrity and passion make us a sustainable business at our heart.

We provide staffing solutions to major employers who are essential to the communities they serve – health services, social care and social housing. In addition, we place people into the jobs of the future through our STEM specialist businesses. This deliberately balanced portfolio, which is at the heart of our ESG strategy, enables us to ensure we are investing in the jobs of tomorrow whilst supporting essential jobs for the communities of today.

Whether we’re developing great relationships with clients, working hard to engage our people, partnering with charities, or encouraging diversity, these are an integral part of our sustainable business strategy. We keep charitable and social initiatives relevant to the local communities into which we are placing candidates every day. This means social responsibility isn’t an afterthought, it’s part of how we operate.

Case Study 1: Retinue Solutions: Supporting the Creation of New Communities: Afghan Refugees

Many of our social impact projects support communities that our customers service, but this project gave Retinue Solutions the opportunity to support a new community. By early September 2021, over 8,000 refugees from Afghanistan had arrived in the UK. It was widely reported that the majority fled the country with few possessions. The UK Government launched Operation Warm Welcome which is designed to help Afghan refugees rebuild their lives, find work, pursue education and integrate into their local communities.

Working with a local volunteer group and the Council’s lead for refugees, the team at Retinue supported a group of 154 Afghan’ predominantly women and young people with a donation of several hundred brand new hijabs, traditional dresses and over 100 pairs of children’s shoes.

This project was an example of our ESG values in practice with the aim to:

• Reduce the impact of poverty on the communities our customers serve.
• Deliver our services in a way that allows us and our clients to support the United Nations Paris Agreement.
• Foster an environment where all differences are valued, progression is merit based, practices are equitable, and everyone experiences a sense of belonging.
• Strengthen existing, and acquire new, trusted customer partnerships through having aligned ESG goals
• Attract & retain talent through having a strong social impact ethos
• Reducing inequalities
• Supporting sustainable cities and communities
• Reducing poverty; and
• Gender equality

“The hijab is such an important part of some of the women and girl’s identity. It’s fantastic to have a thoughtful donation that gives consideration to what this new community needs.” Paul Trendall, Liberal Democrat Borough Councilor

Our Future of Work Steering Group is pushing forward a globally aligned approach to take forward the best of what we’re already doing from an ESG perspective, as well as launching new initiatives. We are particularly focused on encouraging young voices in our businesses as our future business stewards and have encouraged our high potential young people to take a lead in developing ESG initiatives to make them feel integral to building our future.

We work hard to create an environment where our people can see their careers grow. With our international growth plans, we encourage international mobility which benefits us because our people transfer that knowledge from one country to the next. Everyone is encouraged to be themselves and to be empowered to grow their business. Having the freedom and ability to build a business or run your own desk is the DNA of the nGAGE Group.

From the outset of their career within the nGAGE family we also instill in people the right way to do things and that in turn delivers profit in a sustainable way.

THE NGAGE FOUR PILLARS OF SUSTAINABILITY

Our sustainability strategy is focused on four pillars:

1. PEOPLE

2. CLIENTS & CANDIDATES

3. COMMUNITIES & CULTURE

4. ENVIRONMENT

1. PEOPLE

The Group’s strategy for growth is centered on international expansion and creating deep industry expertise by offering continuous development and career opportunities. We are on a journey to be known as an unrivalled place to work and build a career.

Our people are integral to the success of this strategy, so we are focused on supporting long term careers through our Talent Development programs, a home-grown management team and international mobility to deliver organic, sustainable growth in addition to growth by appropriate acquisitions. This is delivered through managed risk taking in nurturing and developing niche high growth businesses that are essential to building the future of work.

As we expand internationally into a truly global and sustainable business we remain diligently focused on data-driven insights that enable our employees to focus on what really matters in their job: serving clients and candidates even better.

Our global health and well-being offering aims to support our people with access to information on how to maintain and improve health and well-being at work, either at the office or while working from home. Using the workplace as a setting to promote and support health and well-being makes good business sense and has many benefits for both the nGAGE family and our people.

We support the inclusion of people who experience a distance to the labour market, for instance because of gender, age, ethnicity or disability. We strongly promote equal opportunities and respect and safeguard human and labour rights in order to maximize future employment for as many people as possible.

2. CLIENTS AND CANDIDATES

By helping candidates find suitable careers and develop their full potential, and by finding Employers the people who best fit into their organisation to sustain their success, we create value for society as a whole.

We help our clients to find the best talent with the most relevant skills for their business. Our technological expertise, combined with our human touch, enables us to focus on our clients’ business needs by providing tailor-made solutions and the best value creating advice. We help candidates in finding jobs and developing their skills so they can have a meaningful career. Our data-driven insights enable us to quickly identify smart career opportunities and make the perfect match. Candidates are personally guided to short- and long-term career success.

3. COMMUNITIES AND CULTURE

Contributing to economic growth is the most obvious way to create more jobs, which allows us to touch the work lives of more people. By combining our human touch with technological expertise and data-driven insights, we empower our clients and talent to grow, develop and improve, so they can add value to the economy, both now and in the future.

Having a meaningful job impacts people’s lives. Through our core business, sustainability activities, and our dialogue with key customers, authorities and other relevant bodies and institutions, we help shape the world of work, maximizing future employment and sustainable economic growth.

We encourage each business within the nGAGE family to give back to charities that are relevant to the businesses and communities they support in their day-to-day work. It is really encouraging to see our People‘s determination being channeled to raise as much money as they can for charitable causes - that competitive spirit, resilience and teamwork are what people need to be successful here and that’s the reason we hire them in the first place.

We try to encourage that and bring it out during their work too. We’re very much aligning our charity and community initiatives with our culture and how we work so it’s more than an afterthought. It’s in our DNA.

Shaping the future world of work can only be achieved in a sustainable way if certain ESG ‘fundamentals’ are addressed. These range from safeguarding ethical behaviour, applying decent environmental care, taking supply chain responsibility with regard to being a good corporate citizen, and ensuring our organisation is transparent.

Governance

Our governance policies are directly linked to our business values and strategy. They provide our people around the world with specific guidance and instructions on their business behaviour. They cover compliance with business principles, insider dealing, bribery, gifts & hospitality, data protection, discrimination, intimidation and harassment, and e-communications. These policies are a mandatory part of our induction training and are highlighted during refresher training. Promoting best practices and raising awareness of relevant laws and policies is an ongoing process across the nGAGE family.

Providing a Safe Channel for Feedback

We encourage the reporting of serious misconduct, preferably directly to local management and through established operational channels. If, for any reason, these reporting lines are considered inappropriate or are likely to be ineffective, or if a complainant fears retaliation, use can be made of our confidential reporting facility via any of our business’ websites.

We are supporters of the United Nations Global Compact and its ten principles regarding human rights, labour rights, the protection of the environment and anti-corruption. The principles regarding labour are those outlined in the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work: freedom of association and the right to collective bargaining, elimination of forced or compulsory labour, the abolition of child labour, and the elimination of discrimination in respect of employment and occupation. While always complying with national laws and practice, we are also committed to making the Global Compact principles part of our strategy, culture and day-to-day operations.

In any M&A project, for example, the cultural fit between nGAGE and the potential target as well as the risk profile of the potential target are essential aspects in the due diligence process. This includes looking at their code of conduct and related policies - including on anti-corruption, diversity and inclusion, non-discrimination and data protection. In addition, we would also look at a target’s supplier base, their standard contracts, clients (to the extent permitted under competition law) to be able to properly assess the relevant risks. Findings that we feel can be adjusted to our standards post acquisition will be addressed on completion of the transaction.

From an employee perspective we use Workday Peakon Employee Voice to gain insights into the priorities and concerns of our people. This is an always on feedback tool which provides an entirely confidential channel in which feedback and concerns can be given to ensure our business remains ethical, resilient and manages risk effectively.

We have identified five of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to provide focus to our ESG Strategy efforts. As a global recruitment group, nGAGE specifically contributes to decent work and economic growth (SDG 8), industry, innovation and infrastructure (SDG 9), affordable and clean energy (SDG 7), and sustainable cities and communities (SDG 11) in the markets we support from a recruitment perspective. In addition, we look to support reduced inequalities (SDG 10) in the way in which we enable our customers to remove inequality from their recruitment process.

4. ENVIRONMENT

In the UK, businesses account for over 85% of total GHG emissions - making corporate action the number one priority in helping stop climate change. Because of the nature of our business, our impact on the environment is far less than that of some other sectors, such as manufacturing. Almost all of our business is conducted in local markets, and we have many locations close to both clients and candidates, greatly reducing travel and the resulting CO2 emissions. Despite this inherently minimal impact, we do what we can to limit our ecological footprint. We do so by conserving energy by using sustainable energy sources, reducing water and paper usage, while re-using or recycling wherever possible.

A significant recent change has been to introduce hybrid working which has greatly reduced the need for our people to commute when not business essential. This has had a knock-on impact on the office capacity required and also the type of office facilities required enabling us to move to a more agile office property approach which not only minimises office use but has also allowed us to source more environmentally efficient office spaces to support our agile workforce needs.

We have adopted a number of initiatives to encourage greater environmental awareness and to reduce the carbon footprint of our businesses and have set our 2050 net-zero target. Over the coming years we will continue to review our emissions and launch new initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint even further where possible.

The specific goals we have set ourselves across the nGAGE group businesses are:

• Reduce energy usage by optimising heating/cooling system, installing energy efficient lighting and replacing old appliances with energy efficient appliances where possible
• Improve technology to reduce work travel to a minimum
• Implement Hybrid working
• Lease offices with “Excellent” BREEAM or A EPC rating
• Eliminate single use plastics
• Print as minimally as possible
• Reduce, reuse, recycle

In addition, we encourage all of our employees to play their part in our journey to reduce our carbon footprint by taking the following actions at work and at home:

SUMMARY

As an international player in the labour market education, nGAGE has in-depth knowledge of the world of work. Through our daily interaction with clients and talent, and our ongoing dialogue with governments and key employers, we take the lead in shaping the world of work. By creating equal opportunities and contributing to better functioning labour markets in this way, we create for ourselves and our investors the opportunity to touch the work lives of more people.

Case Study 2 Building Skills to support local communities