Stephen Bird

The firm has said it will give its employees access to an app that can measure and reduce their carbon footprint after SLA research found that home working now generates 55% of the firm’s emissions.

The app, Pawprint, will allow the firm to gather anonymous data to remove some of the assumptions in our current WFH emissions analysis. By informing people of their biggest carbon impacts the app then challenges them to make either large or small changes to address this.

The move is part of SLA’s accelerated climate change commitments which aim to reduce carbon emissions by 50%. The firm said its approach to managing its operational emissions is to reduce as much as it can then offset what remains.

SLA said a dramatic change in the nature of our operational carbon footprint, which the firm has been monitoring since 2006, occurred during the pandemic as emissions from its offices and business travel reduced. Travel which made up 65% of SLA’s footprint in 2019 only represented 14% of emissions in 2020, by building on the technology the firm has become accustomed to, SLA said it can continue to reduce business travel from the pre-pandemic levels.

SLA also announced that it will be offering UK employees electric car leasing which is an environmentally friendly and cost-effective way to travel. The firm said providing greener and more sustainable choices for employees as part of the flexible benefits package is an important step to helping everyone have the opportunity to make sustainable changes.

Stephen Bird, CEO, commented: “ESG is not a hygiene factor and it is not a bolt on activity, we all have a responsibility to constantly analyse our own progress and ambition. We also know that commitments need to be more than words.

“We need to be held to account on both our plans and progress – through clear and specific targets, and transparent and credible reporting.

“As a business we are carbon neutral, through offsetting 110% of our operational carbon footprint and by accelerating our climate change commitments we hope to demonstrate our constructive contribution towards decarbonisation.”