Admind has developed and published its first ESG report. Piotr Dáo, Community Manager, inventor, and main coordinator of the project, talks about the multi-stage process of creating the report, the challenges, and the goals for the future.
STAGE 1: MOTIVATION
At the outset, I would like to emphasise that Admind is a B Corp agency, and that the core of our business purpose is not only economic profit, but above all, the care of all our stakeholders. And I don’t just mean our clients, but also the planet, the environment, communities and our entire workforce. Even though it is not mandatory for our organisation, I thought it would be worthwhile to publish such a report because we do cool things and we can brag about them to inspire others.
STEP 2: RESEARCH
I started by looking at other ESG reports. I became curious about what other companies in different sectors were doing in this area. This prompted me to do more. We already monitor many of our activities. Also, in the context of the upcoming B Corp recertification. I thought we had a good basis for developing our report. I looked at what elements we should include in the report and what we should leave out. Of course, we were not bound by any top-down guidelines as we did the whole process on a voluntary basis, but many companies are obliged to report according to a strict framework.
STEP 3 DATA COLLECTION
This was a team effort from the beginning. I am extremely grateful to my colleagues Dagmara Stasica and Fahira Hidayah for their very painstaking and diligent work, which consisted of reviewing all invoices and tallying how many kilowatts of electricity we used, how much fuel we purchased for our car fleet, how much paper we used, etc. We also analyzed our business travels, which are not uncommon in an organization that works with international clients. As part of our previous social impact activities, we had already monitored a lot of data, such as: water consumption, so it was much easier to gather some data.
STEP 4 DATA ANALYSIS
We asked another Polish B Corp organization, TerGo, which specialises in calculating carbon footprints, to help us analyse our data as transparently and professionally as possible. We are grateful to them for guiding us through the process, but also for offering us very favourable financial terms. This is how the environmental part of the report came about.
We developed the social part ourselves. Admind is very active in this area. We carry out many activities that have a significant social impact. For example, we have a long-standing relationship with FilmOn festival, a film festival for people with disabilities, which was recently recognised in the prestigious Responsible Business Report. We also have a number of interesting internal initiatives. For example, theme months where we focus on different areas that are close to our employees: Pride Month, Mental Health Awareness Month or No Plastic Month. Every year, May is our Bike Month, during which we promote cycling to work, organise first-time cycle training and bike inspections.
In the governance section, we described and presented the demographics of our organisational structure with charts, such as which generations work for us, in which locations, in which mode of work – desk-based in one of the offices or fully remote. We also presented our anti-bullying policy. One of our core values is kindness, which means caring for our employees, the planet and communities, so we devoted a lot of space to showing the full path for reporting potential misconduct. We wanted to share with others how we deal with it.
STEP 5 BUILDING THE STRUCTURE OF THE REPORT
The whole process took about 4 months. But I started with a table of contents. We tried to describe everything accurately, in a way that was transparent but at the same time interesting to potential audiences. I was supported in this process by copywriter Morgan Nicholas-Karpiel. The most important thing for us was transparency and precision in describing the various phenomena. The whole experience was also overseen by Mateusz Zabierowski, co-founder and CEO of Admind.
STAGE 6 GRAPHIC DESIGN
The next stage was the graphic design of the document. The main task here fell to Wiktor Skawski, for whom I was probably the most difficult client so far. Also involved in the process were Marta Szmyd – Creative Director, Maciej Ochęcki – Design Lead, Anna Niklewicz – Senior UX Researcher & Designer. The visual layer was based on our visual branding. We used colours, fonts and visual elements consistent with key visual of Admind. It was very important to us that we achieved full brand consistency with our branding. But that’s what we, as an agency, know best.
STAGE 7 PUBLICATION
We have successfully completed and published the document as planned. It has found its place on our website, where it is available to everyone. We have also invited our social media audiences, our newsletter recipients, our customers and our partners, but most of all our employees, to read it – because it is their commitment and attitude that allows Admind to grow in line with our core values, but also in a truly green direction.
STAGE 8 CONCLUSIONS
While working on the report, we immediately started to look at processes that would reduce our carbon footprint in the future. Out of curiosity, I compared our current score in this area with other companies of similar size or within our sector. Our carbon footprint is not bad, but we see many areas where we are ready to make radical changes for the better.
We intend to meet the challenge of reducing our footprint by 15% in the near future. We want to minimise the frequency of business trips and, where possible, replace air travel with rail. Krakow is well connected. We will easily find good train links to Berlin, Amsterdam or Zurich. We will also continue to encourage employees to use public transport or, for example, bicycles. We have already taken the first steps with our own car fleet, replacing one car with a hybrid. For this year’s B Corp Summit, co-founder and CEO Mateusz Zabierowski is taking the train from Warsaw to Amsterdam.
We will also be looking closely at our office premises to see if they are being used efficiently. There may be a decision to give up some of our office space in order to reduce our carbon footprint in this area as well.
Our employees and associates are committed and proactive in caring for the environment, as can be seen in our day-to-day operations, so I am sure that the continuous process of change we have decided to embark upon will not be a problem for them. On the contrary, it will be another reason to be proud and to strengthen our shared values.
STAGE 9 WHAT’S NEXT?
We immediately started preparing for the next edition of the report. We are already monitoring more data on an ongoing basis and carefully recording it in the relevant spreadsheets. We are also collecting data on the qualitative impact of our social activities. There are several initiatives which I know I have forgotten to mention in this report. We will certainly not repeat this mistake next year. The activities we are undertaking now will make it easier and quicker to work on the next edition of the report. We are trying to optimise these processes.
Personally, I’m keen to see Admind continue to change for the better, becoming a more responsible and sustainable business with every step we take. I hope that the next reports we publish will demonstrate this.
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