We apply governance systems and controls to ensure that we manage our business in a responsible way.
These controls guide our decision making and interaction with stakeholders, as well as ensuring ethical conduct, compliance with our professional and regulatory obligations, transparency and accountability, and effective risk management.
"Stakeholder engagement, effective communication, and transparency are the cornerstones of responsible business at WBD. By fostering open dialogue and building trust with our stakeholders, we ensure that our business practices are aligned with our values and commitments. This approach not only strengthens our relationships but also drives sustainable success."
Jenny Hill, Managing Associate General Counsel and a member of our Responsible Business Working Group
Building relationships that last
By applying the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and risk management, we build sustainable practices within WBD and long-term relationships with our clients and supply chain.
What is our Ethical Framework?
Our Ethical Framework sits at the heart of our culture and supports the delivery of our business strategy, including our ambition to lead the way on Responsible Business.
Regular ethics training and refresher training to all our colleagues reminds everyone how our Ethical Framework helps to challenge us and hold us to account.
The Ethical Framework is based on the core values of respect, integrity and collaboration, it helps us shape our collective identity, guiding how we do things and how we work together. We focus on the following three ethical standards:
- Supporting our people and unlocking potential: We respect each other and value everyone. We build inclusive working environments to enable talented people to contribute in different ways and support colleagues to reach their full potential through our commitment to healthy high performance
- Working professionally in our marketplace: We conduct ourselves in a principled way with integrity and honesty. We recognise both our individual and collective responsibility to act in the public interest by prioritising public trust and confidence in the legal profession. We strive to achieve the highest standards in everything we do, respecting our professional obligations and the laws and legal rights we must follow
- Positively impacting the world around us: We work as a team with our colleagues, our clients and our communities to design and deliver solutions and to help build a fairer and more sustainable society. We encourage collaboration, creativity and innovation.
Our Responsible Business work
Our responsible business activity is led by our Partner Lead for Responsible Business, Sally Dallow and is championed at all levels of the business. Sally chairs our Responsible Business Steering Group, which involves strategy leads across all areas of our responsible business activity and works with our UK Chair to provide guidance to the Board around our Responsible Business strategy and our Ethical Framework.
The Responsible Business Steering Group meet quarterly to discuss performance and areas where we can continue to improve. Alongside this group, we have our Responsible Business Working Group who implement activity on the ground.
Governance priorities
Regulatory compliance and best practice
Privacy
Supply chain
Human rights
Our Risk and Best Practice team, headed by Louise Norman, our General Counsel, supports our regulatory compliance together with our ISO certifications and business continuity plan. The team also designs our service standards, policies, procedures and risk related controls, provides risk reporting, training and internal independent audit services.
As a firm we protect personal data and privacy rights and maintain confidentiality. This means maintaining robust IT systems and making sure everyone is aware of their responsibilities and our procedures for handling and protecting data and confidential information, including data protection compliance and the reporting of breaches.
Working closely and collaboratively with our supply chain is essential to our business. Our Supplier Code Of Conduct sets out our expectations for our supply chain, while our Supply Questionnaire ensures that we understand more about the responsible business activities of our suppliers to drive best practices and enable us to better support one another.
We also expect our suppliers, and their supply chains, to engage in good employment practices and to comply with all relevant legislation and regulations in the countries in which they operate (including the Modern Slavery Act 2015).
Our commitment to being a responsible business is grounded in human rights. This includes civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights ensuring protection and respect for all. Everyone is entitled to these rights, without discrimination.
Modern slavery is a crime and a violation of fundamental human rights. It takes various forms such as slavery, servitude, forced and compulsory labour and human trafficking, all of which have in common the deprivation of a person’s liberty by another in order to exploit them for personal or commercial gain.
We are committed to acting ethically and with integrity in all our business relationships and take a zero-tolerance approach to slavery and human trafficking. We aim to comply with the Modern Slavery Act 2015 (MSA) and expect the same from everyone we work with.
Everyone has a voice
Providing an opportunity to engage employees through consultation, our Employee Forum empowers our people to contribute to the success of the business and commit to meaningful change. Our two-way communication with partners is supported by our Partner Representative Group.
Further support is provided through a range of training: covering ethics, information security and data protection, economic crime, regulatory compliance and responsible business practices. These programmes help colleagues understand their responsibilities, identify and escalate concerns, and reinforces our commitment to a culture where everyone feels supported to speak up and challenge any behaviour that falls short of our values.
In addition, all new joiners take part in a Responsible Business Induction, which provides an overview of our Responsible Business objectives, initiatives, networks and colleague groups, and explains how they can get involved in supporting our responsible business agenda.
Don’t just take our word for it
Independent certifications help us demonstrate our commitment to quality, information security, environmental management and colleague wellbeing.
We're certified to ISO 9001 (quality management), ISO 27001 (information security), ISO 14001 (environmental management) and ISO 45001 (occupational health and safety), assuring our clients, colleagues and suppliers that these areas are governed through recognised international standards.
Our EcoVadis Gold accreditation, which we've retained for three years' running, showcases the strength of our high standards of ethics and responsible business conduct.
What's more, our Great Place to Work certification reflects our commitment to creating an inclusive workplace where colleagues feel respected, listened to and comfortable sharing their views. We believe that a culture of openness and constructive challenge helps us make better decisions, uphold our values and deliver the high standards of service our clients expect.
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