Compass Group

Stakeholder engagement
The company discloses an overview of the issues raised during its stakeholder engagement activities and states the frequency and channels it uses to engage with its stakeholder groups. Furthermore, the company’s stakeholder engagement covers nature, nutrition, and social issues.

Sustainable development strategy
The company discloses its process for identifying and prioritising its most relevant sustainability impacts as well as the outcome of this process, in relation to its sustainability strategy.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company has set time-bound targets to reduce its scope 1 and 2 greenhouse gas emissions, i.e. reducing its absolute Scope 1 and 2 GHG emissions by 46% from a base year of 2019 by 2030. It reports progress against its scope 1 and 2 targets. Additionally, its scope 1 and 2 emissions targets are aligned with a 1.5-degree trajectory.

Food loss and waste
The company has set a food loss and waste (FLW) reduction target and reports regularly on its progress towards meeting this target. The target is in line with SDG 12.3, which aims for a 50% reduction in FLW by 2030. In addition, The company partners with its clients to prevent food waste by improving forecasting, practicing better food storage, and maximizing the use of all edible ingredients.

Plastic use and packaging waste
The company demonstrates commitment and partakes in activities related to plastic use reduction and transitioning towards sustainable packaging.

Protein diversification
The company discloses quantitative evidence of increasing alternative proteins within its portfolio.

Workforce nutrition
The company has implemented a nutrition education programme for its employees.

No leading practices were identified in the social inclusion area.

Act ethically
The company demonstrates a clear commitment to safeguarding personal data and maintains transparency in this regard. Additionally, it has a comprehensive global tax strategy in place. The company has a policy prohibiting bribery and corruption and identifies bribery and corruption risks by means of periodic internal audits and risk based country level effectiveness testing. Furthermore, it ensures that all contracts with direct business relationships include anti-bribery and anti-corruption clauses. As part of its dedication to combating bribery and corruption, the company also provides a grievance mechanism for stakeholders to raise concerns and complaints.

Provide and promote decent work
The company publicly commits to respecting the health and safety of workers and expects its business relationships to also prioritize that of their workers through a policy statement. Additionally, the company discloses a time-bound target for paying all workers a living wage, indicating its commitment to fair compensation. To support its suppliers in paying a living wage, the company describes its efforts in working towards this goal. For each category of employees, the company discloses the proportion of women in its total direct operations workforce, demonstrating its commitment and target to gender equality and women’s empowerment. Regarding its board members, the company has reached a significant milestone with 38.46% of women serving on the board.

Respect human rights
The company has a publicly available policy statement committing it to respecting both human rights and the ILO core labour rights. This commitment extends to the company’s suppliers. Furthermore, the company demonstrates transparency by outlining its process for identifying human rights risks and impacts related to its own operations as well as its supply chain. To illustrate its dedication to addressing human rights risks, the company provides a case study that showcases how it has taken action in response to a significant human rights risk. Additionally, the company emphasizes its accountability by indicating the presence of a human rights grievance mechanism that is accessible to all workers and external stakeholders who may be adversely affected by the company’s actions.

Governance and accountability for sustainable development
The company has an opportunity to link performance criteria in senior executives’ remuneration policies to targets and objectives which cover environmental and social issues. While the company states that the board of directors has expertise in sustainability and CSR, it has an opportunity to disclose whether its highest governance body has expertise with respect to the company’s most material sustainability topics.

Lobbying and advocacy
The company has an opportunity to disclose a list of trade associations of which it is a member. Furthermore, the company can provide a clear and detailed framework for assessing the alignment of these trade associations with its sustainability targets. Additionally, the company can report any (potential) misalignments between the lobbying activities of its trade associations and its sustainability targets.

Stakeholder engagement
The company has an opportunity to explain how it has responded to key issues raised by each stakeholder group and disclose specific outcomes implemented to respond to key issues for each stakeholder group, beyond materiality assessment.

Sustainable development strategy
While the company discloses some sustainability objectives, including climate, it has an opportunity to establish group-wide targets for the most material parts of its value chain. Furthermore, it could report consistently against all its targets.

Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
The company discloses its target of reducing its absolute Scope 3 GHG emissions by 28% from all food and drink purchased by 2030 from a 2019 base year. However, there is an opportunity to extend this target to cover all categories of scope 3. The company should set a time-bound target to reduce all its scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions in alignment with a 1.5-degree trajectory and report progress against it.

Ecosystem conversion
While the company discloses some evidence of addressing conversion, this does not guarantee deforestation and conversion-free-aligned practices. While it has a target to achieve conversion-free supply chains, it has an opportunity to cover all high-risk commodities.

Plastic use and packaging waste
While the company describes its activities to reduce plastic use and transition towards sustainable packaging, it has an opportunity to disclose the associated quantitative data.

Protein diversification
The company has an opportunity to set a sales-based target to increase alternative proteins across its portfolio, as well as report progress against this target.

Water withdrawal
The company has an opportunity to enhance its disclosures relating to water use and withdrawal.

Accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods
The company has an opportunity to disclose its commitment and commercial activities to improve the accessibility and affordability of nutritious foods.

Availability of nutritious foods
The company discloses its plans to update over 10,000 of its recipes to go beyond the UK Government’s recommendations for a balanced diet, including a commitment to a 20% sugar decrease. Nevertheless, there is potential for improvement in reporting its overall efforts to reduce sugar, salt, and fat, and/or increase the presence of fruits, vegetables, nuts, and whole grains in its food offerings. Additionally, there is an opportunity for the company to establish nutrition criteria aligned with government-endorsed nutritional guidelines and to set a sales-based target to increase the proportion of more nutritious products.

Food safety
The company has an opportunity to showcase that all of its own operations are certified to a GFSI food safety scheme or any other widely recognized certification program specific to the industry. Additionally, the company can disclose the percentage of food suppliers who are certified to a GFSI-recognized food safety scheme.

Workforce nutrition
The company has an opportunity to disclose evidence of other workforce nutrition programmes, such as workplace breastfeeding support and healthy food offerings. Furthermore, the company has an opportunity to implement workforce nutrition programmes for its supply chain workers.

Child labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose examples of remediation programmes when a case of child labour is found in its operations and to indicate how it is building the capacity of its suppliers to prevent child labour impacts. While the company has in place expectations on the prohibition of child labour for its suppliers, it could disclose related policy requirements including the use of an age verification for workers.

Farmer and fisher livelihoods
The company discloses how it prioritises purchasing from local sources and continues to expand its partnerships with local, diverse and minority suppliers but it could provide more details on how it improves farmer resilience through its procurement practices. Also, it could identify living income benchmarks and assess living income gaps for some regions or commodities.

Forced labour
The company has an opportunity to disclose forced labour requirements for its operations and supply chain such as a prohibition to pay recruitment fees, to retain workers’ personal documents or to restrict workers’ freedom of movement. Further, it could provide evidence of how it builds the capacity of its suppliers to prevent forced labour impacts.

Land rights
The company has an opportunity to disclose a commitment to respect ownership and use of land and natural resources and related legitimate tenure rights. Furthermore, it could describe a process at its operations and supply chain level to identify legitimate tenure rightsholders when acquiring, leasing or making other arrangements to use land and to negotiate with them to provide adequate compensation.

Act ethically
The company has an opportunity to have a policy setting out its lobbying and political engagement approach. Currently, the company mentions in its Code of Ethics that it does not make any political contributions, but it does not have an official public policy document to formalize this commitment. To enhance transparency, the company could disclose its lobbying expenses and make it public knowledge. Additionally, the company could mandate that third-party lobbyists adhere to its lobbying and political engagement policy.

Provide and promote decent work
The company has an opportunity to disclose its monitoring process for supplier health and safety performance. Additionally, the company can disclose the methodology it uses to determine a living wage for the regions in which it operates. While the company disclose its mean and median gender pay gap, it still has the opportunity to disclose the ratio of basic salary and remuneration between women and men in its total direct operations workforce, categorized by significant locations of operation.

Respect human rights
The company provides an overview of its human rights risk assessment process. However, it has an opportunity to be more transparent by disclosing the human rights issues it considers to be most significant. While the company discloses the steps taken to prevent, mitigate or remediate slavery issues, it could disclose a global system to act on all its salient human rights issues in all its activities.