Sustainability boards and beyond

To reflect our positioning of sustainability at the heart of our business model, we created our Sustainability Board in early 2021: consisting of senior management from CSR, risk, finance and strategy, the Board is tasked with driving positive sustainable practices throughout the firm with each strategic decision taken having sustainability at its core.

Why?

Climate change is one of the biggest challenges of our generation and we have the responsibility to work together as a firm to make a difference. Clients and employees are increasingly evaluating (and appreciating) our sustainability credentials as part of their selection process and expect good and credible sustainability practices to be in place. We also want to lead the way in encouraging others to act. In addition to this, Forsters recognises the importance of sustainability to future recruits of the firm and wants to recruit people who will embody and perpetuate the core values at the heart of our sustainability model.

What?

The Sustainability Board’s responsibilities include:

• driving forward our commitment to make a commitment to a public target for emission reduction later this year
• ensuring sustainability is incorporated into all our policies; formalising the firm’s overarching sustainability policy
• monitoring the firm’s environmental impact, and reducing it through implementing initiatives; and
• actively encouraging engagement with staff, clients, intermediaries, suppliers and any other relevant stakeholders on sustainability issues.

How?

We want to support our clients to consider sustainability in their decision-making so have created an online Sustainability Hub (#FORSustainability) to bring together our insights and legal expertise on a broad range of environmental matters that affect our clients’ business and personal affairs.

Our Sustainability Group is a team of lawyers drawn from our key practice areas: Private Client, Real Estate, Tax, Banking and Corporate, and we encourage lawyers at all levels of the firm to be involved in this work.

Sustainable graduate recruitment

Forsters has always been mindful of the environmental impact of graduate recruitment as a process and we have already taken steps to reduce waste, particularly in relation to giveaways. To date we have:

• significantly reduced the number of printed handouts given out at careers fairs and instead signposted people to online materials available on our website, via QR codes
• minimised the free branded items traditionally available at careers fairs. Any items we have used are carefully selected to actively promote sustainability, such as reusable water bottles; and
• focussed on hosting virtual events, open days and spotlight sessions for prospective candidates. This not only reduces our carbon emissions from travel but also opens up the event to a wider and more diverse range of candidates. Our two virtual open days and four virtual assessment centres in 2021 were very popular and the firm was able to engage with more people than ever before. Forsters included dedicated talks by internal CSR committees to highlight to prospective applicants the importance of sustainable initiatives at the firm.

However, we recognise that more can and should be done to improve sustainability practices in the recruitment process, and we are keen to build on the work we have undertaken in the last year, during the pandemic, and continue to hold more events online and provide information in a digital format. A number of key areas we are looking to address are:

• committing to eliminating printed materials from the graduate recruitment milk rounds, when they restart
• replacing branded products with donations to environmental and local charities, and
• moving the recruitment and onboarding process online and providing digital rather than paper resources to new joiners, regardless of whether they start at the firm in person or virtually.

Sustainability in graduate recruitment is now a regular agenda item for our Green Impact Group (GIG), who meet monthly to action sustainability initiatives across the firm.

Focusing our attention on improving sustainability in our graduate recruitment process is an important part of our overall sustainability strategy. We look forward to continuing to work with the Sustainable Recruitment Alliance to take forward initiatives.