Dialogue and steering lead to sustainable development
For over 60 years Peab has contributed to sustainable social development and worked to improve everyday life for people in the community. We do this by building everything from homes, schools and hospitals to bridges, roads and other infrastructure.
Working sustainably is a strategic matter for Peab that in practice always takes place locally, connected to everyday life based on our core values, business concept, mission, strategic targets and Code of Conduct. Our sustainable work is formed by internal and external collaboration in the three areas Social, Environment and Economic where we have identified our material sustainable aspects.
These areas guide our Board and executive management, they are integrated into the Group’s business plan and support our work in product development and technical solutions. As a big local employer throughout the Nordic region it is crucial for us to attain, through cooperation and dialogue, a good insight into local community needs. Our ambition is to then convert this knowledge into a locally produced community commitment where we can truly be useful to the people around us. It is equally important for us to ensure healthy, safe and inclusive workplaces. We also take a big responsibility for forming a sound and sustainable industry that can contribute to positively developing society.
Stakeholder dialogues provide essential knowledge
We achieve the best results by collaborating with our stakeholders around sustainability matters. Our priorities and actions are greatly influenced by the expectations and demands expressed by stakeholders. An ongoing stakeholder dialogue provides us with a good comprehension of what the most important issues are for different groups. These discussions take place in both informal meetings with customers, suppliers, employees and other stakeholders and in more structured contexts such as supplier audits, meetings with politicians and other decision-makers, investor dialogues and workshops at colleges. The accumulated result from these dialogues forms our materiality analysis and is the basis of our sustainability work priorities.
Peab’s sustainability reporting
Peab reports our sustainability work according to the reporting standard Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and in our judgement the Sustainability Report follows in all material respects the version GRI Standards, Core. The scope of the Sustainability Report is presented in the accompanying Sustainability appendix, which can be found at peab.inpublix.com/2020, where the GRI index and sustainability data have been collected. During the year the work to ensure the quality of the data in all sustainability aspects has continued. This is a challenging process that will proceed in 2021.
Peab’s definition of sustainability
For Peab sustainability means responsible entrepreneurship. Everything we do should be ethical and sustainable long-range Socially, Environmentally and Economically.
Locally produced community building
Through local collaboration among our four business areas our more than 15,000 employees ensure that wherever possible we take advantage of local resources in the form of our own personnel, input goods and subcontractors. Together with our social engagement in the community and our integrated climate and environmental work this forms the foundation of what we call locally produced community building.
Peab’s stakeholders
| Stakeholder | Expectations of Peab | Dialogue examples |
| Shareholders | Responsible ethical entrepreneurship, long-term financial value development that creates annual dividends, ongoing risk mapping and risk management, awareness and measures to reduce climate and environmental impact, community involvement through, for example, integration programs and contributions to job experience and free time activities for youths, responsibility throughout the value chain. | AGM, analyst meetings, surveys from share funds, investor meetings, national and international evaluations. |
| Employees; existing and potential | Responsible ethical entrepreneurship, good work environment and high degree of safety, skills development, good leadership, equal opportunity and diversity, good work and employment conditions, awareness and measures to reduce climate and environmental impact, community involvement through, for example, integration programs and contributions to job experience for youths, responsibility throughout the value chain. | Daily dialogue, employee surveys, work environment evaluation, work environment dialogues, student surveys, workplace meetings, union collaboration, internal training, incident follow-ups, management meetings, goal and developmental discussions, external surveys concerning employer brand, collaboration with students and the education system. |
| Customers | Responsible ethical entrepreneurship, professional businessmanship, competence, resource capacity, quality, availability, experience and expertise exchanges, construction, good work and employment conditions, certifications, ongoing risk mapping and risk management, awareness and measures to reduce climate and environmental impact, community involvement through, for example, integration programs, internships and contributions to job experience for youths, responsibility throughout the value chain. | Meetings in person, daily contacts, networks, partnership projects, dialogue meetings, customer meetings, fairs, customer surveys, questionnaires from customers, procurements and audits. |
| Local community | Contributions to local community development, cost-efficient construction and housing in different price categories, ongoing risk mapping and risk management, awareness and measures to reduce climate and environmental impact, care for the environmental locally, community involvement through, for example, integration programs and contributions to job experience for youths, sponsoring local youth activities, responsibility throughout the value chain. | Receiving visits, partnership projects, information meetings, networks, contacts with county boards/municipalities, environmental reports, vision work, mentoring, sponsor projects, citizen and resident dialogues. |
| Suppliers | Responsible ethical entrepreneurship, professional businessmanship, ongoing risk mapping and risk management, awareness and measures to reduce climate and environmental impact (preferably with the supplier), responsibility throughout the value chain. | Procurements, supplier evaluations, meetings in person, daily contacts, supplier meetings, supplier audits sustainable dialogues and partnership projects. |
Social, Environment and Economic in constant collaboration
Peab’s prioritized sustainable areas form a unit, where every part affects, and is affected by, the others. The sustainability areas previously identified as the most relevant for our business to manage, monitor and report on continue to be the most material in 2020.
Social
Peab’s work within Social affects people in the company and externally. It comprises our own employees but also people in the production chain. The social responsibility that stretches beyond the limits of the company is an ever growing part of Peab’s community responsibility.
Sustainability aspects
- Health and the work environment
- Skills recruitment
- Equality, diversity and equal treatment
- Education for the young
- Peab Life*
*Peab Life is part of our social sustainability work where we combine sponsoring and employee engagement with youths, read more.
Environment
Peab’s work within Environment affects environmental and climate aspects in our operations but also other actors in the value chain like suppliers and customers. The construction and civil engineering industry has a significant environmental and climate impact which makes work in this area crucial.
Sustainability aspects
- Climate impact
- Resource efficiency
- Phasing out environmentally and health hazardous products
Economic
Peab’s work within Economic affects our own business but also greatly contributes to sound and safe conditions for the rest of the construction and civil engineering industry; for the actors, individuals, organizations and communities affected in the supply chain.
Sustainability aspects
- Customer and supplier cooperation
- Responsibility in the supply chain
- Ethics and anti-corruption
Peab’s contribution to the global goals is increasingly clear
In 2020 we did an analysis based on the UN’s 17 global goals as to whether or not the goals previously identified by Peab as the ones we have the best prerequisites to contribute to are still relevant. The 17 goals with their 169 targets were discussed and processed in the analysis, which was done together with executive management and in our operations. Peab more or less contributes to, and is affected by, every global goal since they are all integrated and inter-dependent. However, for the period 2021-2023 six of the goals were deemed extra prioritized since they are either areas that hold significant potential risk or areas where Peab has a good chance of promoting sustainable development.
Goal 5 which concerns equal opportunity, is important to Peab since we, like the rest of the industry, still have a long way to go to achieve equal gender distribution.
Goal 8 includes work conditions and is highly topical since it comprises several of Peab’s prioritized sustainable aspects such as a safe work environment, good conditions in our supply chain and the path for youths into the labor force.
Goal 9 is relevant in part because of its connection to our industrial and civil engineering operations and our investment in sustainable innovation.
Goal 11 in many ways sums up the core of Peab which is to build sustainable communities that are safe and accessible to all.
Goal 12 has been added since the period 2018-2020 because of its connection to our environmental goal on resource efficiency.
Goal 13, fighting climate change, affects the future of the whole world and Peab, as a community builder, has a big responsibility in this.
Steering Peab’s sustainable work
Steering Peab’s sustainability work is all about identifying, assessing and managing risks and opportunities, working systematically with continual improvements and in an innovative, responsible manner enable sustainable development. Parallel to central regulations steering is managed as far as possible close to production on a local level.
Peab’s Board has given Peab’s executive management the overriding responsibility for steering and monitoring the integration of sustainability into every aspect of our business. Peab’s Head of Sustainability, who reports to executive management through the COO, is responsible for strategically running and coordinating our sustainability work. The Head of Sustainability, together with the business areas and function specialists, is responsible for ensuring sustainability in operations. Peab works continuously to raise knowledge levels in every part of our organization around matters like the work environment and health, the environment, equal opportunity, leadership, ethics and anti-corruption.
Central regulations and a management system for steering
The central regulations and management system for steering in Peab complies with international conventions and national laws. Our fundamental, internal steering document, Peab’s Code of Conduct, is based on the UN Global Compact principles that include the precautionary principle, human rights and ILO’s core conventions. Peab signed Global Compact 2012 and the Annual and Sustainability Report make up the Group’s Communication on Progress, the annual report to Global Compact. In accordance with the decision by Peab’s President and CEO the company will continue to follow Global Compact.
The President and CEO has ultimate responsibility for ensuring that the Code of Conduct is followed and communicated. This responsibility then goes down the chain of command through management. Every employee is in turn responsible for taking in the information and following the Code of Conduct. The Group’s purchasing function is responsible for checking that suppliers follow the dictates of the Code of Conduct. Peab has a whistleblower function for anyone, employees or external stakeholders, who wishes to draw attention to deviations from the Code of Conduct or other irregularities in the business. The function, which is available on our website and intranet, is handled by Peab’s Ethical Council and whistleblowers can be anonymous. Peab’s Code of Conduct is complemented by four policies; the Environmental Policy, Quality Policy, Information Security Policy and Work Environment Policy. These are then supplemented by a number of other supportive documents such as the Group’s equal opportunity plan.