Unlocking the commercial opportunities from sustainability | Mitie
SFMI winner, Mitie, shows power of aligning sustainability and commercial strategy
The news that “FM leaders are reaching the point where sustainability really pays” was happily announced in the SFMI’s 2024 Summary Report. One of the best illustrations of this is provided by the joint overall winner of the 2024 Awards and FM market leader, Mitie.
Mitie has not only led the market in its own decarbonisation efforts, but it has used them as a springboard to launch a decarbonisation service which is proving to be very successful in the marketplace. This didn’t happen by chance. It was enabled by Mitie’s key goal of aligning sustainability with commercial strategy and delivered through an ambitious plan. To find out more about what it’s done and why, we talked to Mitie’s Group Director for Sustainability, Jason Roberts.
“Our experience with the SFMI has been transformative. The comprehensive ESG audit across all 23 topics has not only validated our sustainability efforts but also helped provide invaluable insights that have propelled our practices to new heights. The SFMI’s rigorous standards and supportive framework have empowered us to make more informed decisions, driving positive change within our organisation and beyond. We are proud to be part of a community that is committed to sustainability and continuous improvement.”
Jason Roberts, Group Director for Sustainability at Mitie
Mitie adds top SFMI Award to its list of achievements
After three years in the elite Platinum category of the SFMI, Mitie was announced as the joint overall winner of the SFMI in 2024, scoring full marks in 20 of the 23 categories. The achievement is the latest in a long line of ESG awards for the company that recently includes inclusion in CDP’s A List and ‘Organisation of the Year’ at Business Green and the Energy Managers Association Awards.
Among the many initiatives driving recent progress is the continuation of its transition to electric vehicles, which is a core driver for getting to Net Zero. Mitie now has transitioned over 6,000 electric vehicles, one of the largest fleets of any company in the UK. Also on the environmental side, it has been trialling a uniform re-use programme, which aims to extend the life of garments and could have a significant future impact.
A key social initiative has been the launch of ‘Action Now’, an ESG training platform for all frontline colleagues. This seeks to overcome the challenges of connecting with remote and often part-time staff, by offering an online training channel which all employees can access via their own devices. “The vision in doing this is that everyone who works at Mitie will have good awareness about sustainability and that every job will be a sustainable job,” explains Jason.
Another area that particularly impressed the SFMI auditing team was Mitie’s governance and understanding of risks and opportunities. Both elements are perfectly demonstrated in the way it has gone about developing a service proposition around decarbonisation. “Mitie were the first SFMI leaders to really start looking at the commercialisation of the climate risk agenda. This required really strong governance processes, an understanding of risks and opportunities and a growth agenda to target decarbonisation services both for existing customers and to attract new,” explains Sunil Shah, Managing Director at Acclaro Advisory & SFMI.
‘Do, lead, deliver’ – the stages of successful commercialisation.
Jason explains that Mitie’s journey towards decarbonisation began in February 2020 with the launch of their climate transition plan, ‘Plan Zero’. This had both risk and opportunity dimensions, with the target of Mitie being Net Zero for GHG Scopes 1 and 2 by the end of 2025 and selling decarbonisation to customers well before then.
Plan Zero had buy-in from the CEO, Phil Bentley, right from the start and he encouraged stretching targets. Jason explains that they initially went to Phil with a plan to be Net Zero by 2030, but he felt that this wasn’t ambitious enough and insisted on it being 2025.
Importantly, they also had an approach to make all this a reality. “We followed a ‘do, lead, deliver’ methodology. We ‘do’ it for ourselves first, we ‘lead’ the industry and in so doing we prove we can ‘deliver’ to our customers,” explains Jason. “It was very intentional, and it was a set plan right from the very beginning, with governance forming a large part of it.”
Setting up the governance to make it a reality
Mitie set up four levels of governance for Plan Zero that involved around 50-60 key people in the organisation. These were:
- The Board, which had ESG as a standing item on each agenda.
- A Board Committee chaired by a non-executive director, which oversaw the plan and reported into the board.
- A Steering Group made up of MDs of relevant companies and other key competencies, which worked on how Mitie would package up and sell decarbonisation to customers.
- A Working Group made up of heads of functions, which worked out how Mitie was going to accomplish its own Net Zero objectives.
“In this way, we got the right people in the right places to make things happen,” observes Jason. It also evidences the “thorough and holistic approach that Mitie has to ESG” which was praised by SFMI auditor, Tracey Rawling Church,
Sunil reinforces the importance of governance not just when it comes to decarbonisation but in all aspects of sustainability. “This is always the critical measure. It defines a great ESG strategy and is essential to integrating ESG in the business – it’s what makes changes stick.”
Another function that Mitie established at an early stage in the process was its own in-house consultancy, charged with knitting together different sustainability services and delivering them seamlessly to clients.
“Mitie Energy is one of the largest energy companies in the country, same with waste, same with landscapes… We had all these solutions, but we didn’t have a way to pull them together, and that’s where the consultants came in. Now we can join the dots up and offer a full turnkey package which customers see as just one company delivering a seamless service.”
‘Decarbonisation, Delivered’, the new service branding
Initially the focus of these consultants was on sustainability generally, but they quickly realised that decarbonisation was the golden thread. This was further reinforced by the launch of the branding for the proposition ‘Decarbonisation, Delivered’ in April 2023, to reflect the focus on decarbonisation and delivery to clients.
Asked about how successful it has been so far, Jason notes that Mitie’s decarbonisation-related projects delivered revenue in excess of £160m in the 2024 financial year with a substantial pipeline of opportunities going forward. To take full advantage of the opportunity, Mitie has been broadening its offering with the acquisition of a large UK commercial solar panel company (Custom Solar), three electrical connection upgrade companies and a company that provides industrial-scale living walls.
“The acquisitions were at the back end of the process, when we were at the point where we were delivering consistently and already one of the leading decarbonisation companies in the country,” notes Jason.
Joining up risk and opportunity
Plan Zero Decarbonisation, Delivered is a perfect illustration of Mitie’s stated aim of “aligning sustainability initiatives with broader commercial strategy”. If this idea still sits uneasily for some, it shouldn’t.
Tracey reflects, “I’ve been around long enough to remember when companies who dared to mention that there might be an opportunity around climate or environment risk were considered green-washers or charlatans. If you weren’t doing it for altruistic reasons, then it didn’t count. Actually, for all businesses to be sustainable we have to find a way to recognise and unlock the opportunities that climate risk brings.”
This philosophy is not only embedded in policy at Mitie, but also within its digital risk management system, which considers risk and opportunity in tandem. That’s along with other commendable features like considering risks and opportunities all the way down to contract level, using double materiality and consulting externally to identify key risks.
If you’ve been paying attention so far, it will come as no surprise to also learn that Mitie is now selling this proprietary system to its customers! Another beautiful example of unlocking the commercial opportunities from sustainability.
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