Sustainable firms more likely to attract new staff, Barclays Travel Forum told

Firms which demonstrate a commitment to sustainability are more likely to retain and recruit staff, delegates at Barclays Travel Forum were told.

Speaking on a panel debate at the conference on Tuesday (May 10), Audley Travel chief sustainability officer Sonal Patel said it made “good business sense” to have an Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) strategy that is “complementary to your business”.

She said: “Embedding ESG into your business will reap the biggest rewards, from recruitment and retention to conversations with insurance companies.”

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Patel said the tour operator’s staff were also “sustainability-focused” and had expectations that the company – which has had a heavy focus on the environment since it was established 25 years ago – would demonstrate similar values.

She added: “We have reacted to the voices within our organisation and now we have Microsoft Teams chats focused on sustainability, like [advice on] simple ways of composting. It’s all driving that positive focus and it’s helping us with recruitment and retention.”

Duce Gotoro, head of sustainable strategy for Air bp, BP’s aviation business, agreed it was “extremely important” for companies, including oil firms, to take a sustainable approach.

“We see it as key to shareholder value,” he said.

Nico Nicholas, chief executive of Trees4Travel, which aims to reduce travellers’ carbon footprint through tree planting in reforestation projects worldwide, said the importance of sustainability for the next generation of employees was demonstrated by the fact the company had “queues of PhD students wanting to come and work for us because of what we are doing”.

“You need to demonstrate you are doing something,” he said, while also stressing the need for engagement and education of staff and customers on the issue.

Marco DeBenedictis, head of sustainable and transition finance at Barclays, agreed that having a sustainable strategy would prove vital to the next generation of young staff. Barclays set up a sustainable product group two years ago.

In a recent survey by Barclays of more than 2,000 travel specialist firms, 70% of respondents said they had externally available ESG strategies, while 70% of boards were incentivised by ESG targets; and 62% said sustainability was more important than ever.

The survey will be published in a report called the Barclays Travel Research Document, set to be released on May 28.