Sustainability strategy

How we manage Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) issues is not an ‘add on’ to how we operate, but at the heart of our business.

Our Vision is to be the world’s premier shared mobility operator with services offering leading safety, reliability and environmental standards that customers trust and value.

This Vision is rooted in our belief that driving modal shift to high quality mass transit is fundamental to a clean, green and prosperous future. Our Purpose, therefore, is to help lead modal shift by making mass transit an increasingly attractive option for all our customers, whether they are individuals, transport authorities, school boards or businesses. We seek to do this by earning our customers’ loyalty by providing safe, reliable and great value multi-modal services on clean and green vehicles. 

Our values

We believe our Values provide a strong framework to deliver on our Vision and Purpose. They are well embedded in our business, and form the basis of our culture.

Read more about our values

Bus Passengers Photo By Annie Spratt (1)

Our focus areas

Contributing to Sustainable Development Goals

We have considered how our Vision and Purpose align with the SDGs and how we can support their delivery. We have identified eight of the targets across five goals where we can contribute to the their achievement. The table below lists them, alongside the relevant Sustainability Accounting Standards Board's Materiality Map® dimensions and the associated Group metrics.

Being a responsible business

Materiality matrix

We have used the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board’s (SASB’s) Materiality Map®, to focus on the aspects most critical to us.

View our materiality matrix

SASB dimension Category Summary Our response
Environment
GHG emissions Direct (Scope 1) greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions that a company generates through its operations. Public transport remains the best solution to cut emissions from travel. Encouraging modal shift to public transport takes more private vehicles off the roads.

Reduction on GHG emissions is one of our KPIs and a key metric of our LTIP scheme
Air quality Air quality impacts resulting from pollutants such as oxides of nitrogen (NOx), oxides of sulphur (SOx) and particulate matter. We are committed to making public transport cleaner and greener. During 2020 we progressed our commitment to invest in zero emission vehicles, with trials in Spain, the UK and the USA.
Social capital
people
hand-leaf
pound
pepers
Access and affordability Ensure broad access to products and services, specifically in the context of underserved markets and/or population groups. Improving the accessibility and affordability of public transport is central to our business. Our services enable social mobility by providing good value travel solutions.
Quality and safety Offer products and/or services that meet customer expectations with respect to their health and safety characteristics. During 2020, in addition to our existing high safety standards, we introduced a range of new measures to manage social distancing and increase cleaning regimes.
Human capital
people
Labour practices Minimum wage policies and provision of benefits which influence how employees are attracted, retained and motivated. We take our duties to our 48,000 employees very seriously and measure our progress frequently through employee engagement surveys.

We believe that our employees should be well rewarded for the job they do and continue to be a real Living Wage accredited employer, paying at least 10% above the national minimum wage in every market.
Employee health and safety Create and maintain a safe and healthy workplace environment that is free of injuries, fatalities and illness. The safety of our people is a priority. Our Driving Out Harm initiative has created a strong safety culture which is evidenced by our low level of incidents.
Governance
Critical incident risk management Identify, understand, and prevent or minimise the occurrence of low probability, high impact accidents and emergencies. We have a strong system of controls to manage and mitigate all types of risk, including the Board’s review of Group-wide risk; the Audit Committee’s reviews of divisional risk; and the Safety & Environment Committee’s oversight of activities.
TCFD

The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD), established by the Financial Stability Board (FSB), was set up to define how reporting could take account of climate-related issues. The Group will incorporate the TCFD recommendations fully into reporting for 2021.

Read more
Stakeholder engagement

Our drive to be a trusted partner to all our stakeholders is rooted in our Purpose. We form relationships based on mutual understanding and respect and, by engaging meaningfully, we gain valuable insights which influence decision-making at every level of the business from the Board to local management teams. Acting on these insights helps us continuously improve what we offer to stakeholders, further reinforcing this virtuous circle.

Engaging our stakeholders

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