A smarter approach

Corporate responsibility

With a strong commitment to the protection of our people and planet, and a social responsibility to long-term sustainability, our roadmap brings together key focus areas and initiatives to address the complex and evolving needs of the world around us.

We promote a respectful and inclusive culture — that creates a positive experience for everyone in contact with us — to ensure that our business remains acceptable and sustainable in the long term.

It’s our future, together.

Safety, health and wellbeing

Our mission is to provide a safe, capable, engaged and productive work environment for our employees and everyone within our company.

A common responsibility drives this at every level of our organisation through good policy, effective procedures, our non-negotiables, company-wide awareness and delivery of expectations, and appropriate action both in compliance and reporting to achieve our safety, health and wellbeing mission.

Our Health and Safety Policy establishes our commitment to effectively managing all health and safety aspects and taking all reasonably practicable measures to improve continuously. It expresses our commitment to ensuring that our people’s behaviour is consistent with an improving safety culture. We ensure our policy is widely communicated, through inductions for new employees, internal training and awareness sessions, site notice boards and communications; and via our intranet.

In addition, we have a health and wellbeing framework, which recognises that our duty of care extends to our people’s physical and mental health.

Safety, health and wellbeing performance is also discussed regularly at all levels of the business, from site-based project teams through to the executive leadership. Further assurance is provided by audits against the requirements for AS/NZS 4801:2001 – Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems.

Diversity and inclusion

Our commitment to an equitable construction industry extends to an inclusive culture that embraces our differences and allows everyone to grow and be equally valued. We are unified in our direction to have a balanced and fair workplace for all.

With a clear vision and focus, we have consecutively achieved pay equity; and have continued to develop under-represented groups within our industry, particularly women, into leadership roles. These strategies are measurable, with targets set, reviewed and reported.

We celebrate differences and promote inclusivity, believing that diversity of thought, approaches and experiences enrich our culture as a business, as set out in our Social Inclusion and Workplace Diversity Policy, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Participation Policy and Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP). Above all, our policies encourage behaving with integrity, honesty and transparency.

Environment and sustainability

In our commitment to environmental management and sustainability, we collaborate to advance innovation and sustainable operations by focusing on early engagement to identify unique opportunities to minimise our ecological footprint..

Our Environmental Policy, Sustainability Policy and Environmental Essentials outline our environmental and sustainability performance commitments. These documents are critical to ensuring our employees and broader stakeholder groups are engaged and aware of our commitments.

Sustainable procurement

We are committed to establishing and harnessing long-lasting relationships of mutual benefit that generate value for our projects, clients and local partners — to leave a positive legacy.

Seymour Whyte strongly opposes modern slavery, including all forms of forced and bonded labour in our supply chain/operations through due diligence in our operations as highlighted in our Sustainable Social Procurement Policy.

Our Human Resources Management Policy sets out a framework for recruiting and selecting employees with the right values, behaviours, skills and experience to support business activities. Our leadership capabilities framework and Code of Conduct — which defines the behaviours we expect and the ethical standards we adhere to — underpin the policy.

Society

We focus our social programs on the needs and expectations of local development and their long-term sustainability. This includes partnerships with young people and First Nations Australians with a focus on empowering them through education, upskilling, employment and economic participation.

We also work with industry to bring about positive change within our communities and for society as a whole through smart engineering, innovation thinking, best practice community engagement and investment in our people.

Our Community and Stakeholder Engagement Policy sets out our commitment to assessing risks and socially sustainable opportunities; and taking appropriate steps to mitigate negative impacts and enhance positive impacts within the communities we operate in.

The VINCI Guide on Human Rights also reinforces our duty to observe the rights of our employees, subcontracted staff and of people within the local community that our projects and activities might impact; and ensures that our people and anyone engaged on a Seymour Whyte project is done so in an ethical and socially responsible manner that does not result in coercive behaviour or contravene our whistleblower and modern slavery policies.

People and planet