RESPECT is St1’s internal Sustainability Framework. Under it, we develop our literacy with regard to sustainability and coordinate our sustainability development topics. The focal themes were identified during a materiality analysis that took place in 2018. At the beginning of 2020, our sustainability development focused on re-assessing and updating the themes which our development will focus on in the future.
The Impacts on People theme focuses on human rights aspects and social sustainability, as well as our ethical principles, and transparent governance.
The Transparency theme deals with our supply chain’s sustainability and traceability, communication on raw materials, and reporting and communication on our sustainability work through the St1’s Sustainability Report (GRI), in strong collaboration with our partner NEOT.
The Sustainable Carbon Cycle theme involves the development of our impact evaluation from the perspective of value chain emissions modelling. It supports our vision to transition towards a more sustainable value chain.
The Competence Development theme focuses on cultivating our organization’s and our partners’ knowledge on sustainability matters and what sustainability means for St1. It includes collaboration with human resources and integrating sustainability as part of our Culture for Growth and general trainings organized on the Nordic level as well as locally.
With its redefined themes, RESPECT continues to serve as our internal framework, helping us bring our development closer to our employees and their daily actions. It connects our sustainability work to our Culture for Growth, and also sets clear priorities for future development priorities and our group-level sustainability strategy.
Focus on competence development
Embedding sustainability at the centre of our business requires our operations and our employees to develop continuously. One of the key themes for us in 2020 proved to be Competence Development. COVID-19 challenged our daily routines, but also gave us the opportunity to quickly adapt and arrange sustainability trainings, which were piloted for our sales organization in Finland in the first half of 2020. This interesting, first-of-its-kind sustainability training focused on the basics of sustainable development, the legislative environment, and new business development. It consisted of five different modules and was arranged together with our partner NEOT. The learnings and feedback that were obtained have been adopted for further competence development actions.
The theme of Competence Development was one of our cornerstones in 2020, and it will continue to be in the future. During the year, we began to bring sustainability to the core of our Culture for Growth and of our people development. In addition to sales-specific trainings, our training agenda focused on the UN Global Compact’s principles, the St1 Code of Conduct package, and the SpeakUp channel and its role within our organization. We also arranged trainings related to our Code of Conduct and ethical business principles for managers, HR, and Finnish production sites.
