Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) is a commitment to best practice and ensuring we have policies and procedures in place to help provide a positive experience for our students, staff, partners, and key stakeholders.
Worcester Students’ Union has a number of policies, procedures, and initiatives in place to support good practice around ESG.
Environmental
- Carbon footprint – as tenants in their building, we work alongside the University of Worcester to mitigate our carbon footprint as much as possible.
- GISU - we achieved 'Very Good' in our most recent Green Impact SU accreditation. You can read more about how we achieved this here.
- Waste and resource use – we work to review our use of resources on a continuous basis through our internal SU Sustainability Committee, the University’s Sustainability Strategy Group, and adopting best practice from the SU sector.
- Recycling - we have recycling and re-use initiatives in place in the SU, including bra recycling, battery recycling, and supporting our local Repair Cafe.
- More information about our initiatives around sustainability can be found on our website by clicking here.
Social
- Employee benefits – we work with our Trustee Board to ensure best practice. Staff benefits can be viewed on our website by clicking here.
- Culture - a positive culture is a key enabler in our new strategic framework.
- Staff input - we have a Staff Consultative Forum, with student staff also sitting on this, as well as on our Health & Safety Committee.
- Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) – we have an EDI Policy, action plan, and working group to ensure best practice in EDI. We produce an annual EDI report to update our members and stakeholders on what actions we have taken each year.
- Anti-racism – anti-racism forms a key part of our EDI action plan, we have an anti-racism statement published on our website, and we have collaborated with the University on their anti-racism statement.
- Gender pay gap – we regularly benchmark the salaries we pay against others within the sector and region, and commissioned external expertise to develop our organisational pay and reward framework.
- Data security – we align with the University on their data protection policies and procedures. We perform an annual GDPR cleanse and maintain a Data Retention Schedule. We have a section of our website dedicated to data protection which includes our policy and privacy notices.
Governance
- Governing policies – our Constitution was last updated in 2019-20 and has been approved by our Trustee Board, our members (through our All Student Meeting), the University, and Charity Commission. Our Bye-Laws are updated as and when necessary, and were comprehensively reviewed in 2019-20.
- Trustee duties – our Trustees receive a full induction to their role and responsibilities, with these set out in our Constitution and Bye-Laws.
- Diversity of our Trustee Board – this is currently under ongoing review, with a skills matrix in place and a diversity matrix to be developed.
- Decision making – we have a matrix of delegated responsibility which undergoes an annual review, as well as an organisational Risk Register and an annual Statement of Legal Compliance.
- SU governance code – this is considered and referred to in our year end report of the Trustees.
- Student Council - our Student Councillors receive an annual induction to their role and responsibilities.