Tomorrow's earth, today's journey: Exploring pathways to sustainability
Market View
Produced by:
Interview with
Gillie Fairbrother
DIRECTOR OF ESG, DAVIES
Tomorrow's earth, today's journey: Exploring pathways to sustainability
Market View
Produced by:
Interview with
Gillie Fairbrother
DIRECTOR OF ESG, DAVIES
About Gillie Fairbrother
Gillie Fairbrother is the Director of ESG at Davies, where she leads the reporting on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) matters across the company's diverse portfolio. Davies offers a broad range of services. This variety in solutions provides a unique and interesting challenge in assessing the materiality of ESG issues within the organisation.
What are the primary challenges leaders like yourself face in implementing sustainable practices within your organisation?
The main challenge is pushback. I've found that people often view sustainability as a nice-to-have rather than linking it to revenue. However, I haven't found this to be a significant challenge at Davies. I'm constantly seeing sustainability requirements coming through in RFPs and client contracts. My advice to anyone facing challenges in convincing people is to make a strong business case - look at what potential business you could lose, where you have opportunities to increase revenue, and tie it right back into the P&L. That's how you overcome the pushback.
How do you balance environmental goals with financial and operational objectives in your corporate strategy?
I never see myself as going out to ask for additional budget to do something sustainability-related. For example, there is a cost associated with setting our science-based targets, but that cost is directly linked to client requests.
My job is to make the business more successful, and as a PE-backed company, that always comes down to financial performance. It doesn't mean I don't care about doing good for the planet, but I'm focused on finding win-win scenarios. If we can reduce energy use in our facilities and save money in the process, that benefits both the environment and our bottom line. It's about constantly looking for those types of opportunities.
If we don't do it, we risk losing that revenue. My job is to make the business more successful, and as a PE-backed company, that always comes down to financial performance.
In your experience, how important is supply chain visibility in achieving your sustainability goals, and what approaches or tools do you use in this process?
Supply chain visibility is absolutely essential, but also one of the biggest challenges depending on your industry. We have a very diverse offering at Davies. For our consultancy and legal arms, the supply chain is relatively straightforward - it's the big tech companies we use, the offices we lease. It's clear what that looks like.
But in our claims business, we could have a contractor network of 10,000 individuals and many SMEs doing very different jobs like repairs and replacements. Getting visibility into that is difficult. We've recently started implementing our first group-wide procurement system to start gathering data on that supply chain, to understand who they are, what they're doing, and their greenhouse gas emissions.
It requires coordination between the sustainability team setting best practices, the procurement team handling the technical aspects of what data we gather in the purchasing process, and the business people actually making those purchasing decisions. It's challenging and we're at the beginning of that journey, but it's critical.
How do you measure the impact of your sustainability programs?
In many ways. It starts with constantly reviewing our materiality to establish what we should be measuring based on regulation, investor input, client expectations and employee interests. As a newly launched ESG function, we published our first ESG report this year with metrics aligned to our people, planet and purpose pillars.
We're constantly tracking things like greenhouse gas emissions, which we currently do on an annual basis given how time-consuming the process is without streamlined automation tools. We've also committed to annual reporting through vehicles like the UN Global Compact communication on progress.
Additionally, we participate in assessments like EcoVadis. So there are many different angles through which we're monitoring, measuring and looking to improve our sustainability performance and impact.
Supply chain visibility is absolutely essential, but also one of the biggest challenges depending on your industry.
How do you engage and motivate employees in sustainability initiatives?
For me, this is one of the easiest aspects. Everybody wants to work for an organisation that's doing something good and purposeful. We want to feel like we're making a difference, not just crunching numbers.
At Davies, we have six employee resource groups, including our latest one called EcoDavies which is focused specifically on sustainability. It's a fantastic opportunity for us to communicate with employees about our initiatives, get their ideas and input, and create opportunities for them to get involved. We organise volunteering events that bring people together and encourage team sustainability pledges.
I think the key is good communication and engagement. In my experience, people genuinely care about these issues. Whenever I have a meeting with someone and share our exciting plans to improve the business, it never fails to get people motivated. It's a topic that naturally sparks enthusiasm.
Looking ahead, what emerging trends or technologies in sustainability management are you most excited about?
We've talked about this dream of an automated technology that could work across diverse businesses and supply chains. Increased regulation is the trend that would make the biggest difference, even if it sounds counterintuitive. While new requirements create work, I believe we need governments to set clear expectations and create a level playing field.
Rather than pressuring individuals to make difficult or expensive personal choices, I would welcome regulations that standardise sustainable best practices across industries. That's the kind of systemic change I believe will drive meaningful progress.
Rather than pressuring individuals to make difficult or expensive personal choices, I would welcome regulations that standardise sustainable best practices across industries.
About Davies
Davies is a specialist professional services and technology firm, working in partnership with leading insurance, financial services, and highly regulated businesses. The company’s global team of more than 8,500 professionals operate across 20+ countries, including the UK & the U.S., delivering professional services and technology solutions across the risk and insurance value chain, including excellence in claims, underwriting, distribution, regulation & risk, customer experience, human capital, digital transformation & change management.
