Within Our Firm

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At a Glance    Message from Our CEO    Values & Leadership    Sustainability at RRA    Within Our Firm    With Our Colleagues    In Our Communities    With Our Clients    Policies & Reporting    Indices    About the Report    SBTi Approval

We’ve embarked on the journey to embed sustainable practices into our business. We strive to lead by example in how we manage our firm, guided by ethics that enable trust and a shared sense of responsibility for the wellbeing of people and the planet.

Ethical Business

At the heart of our firm are people who genuinely care about people. We respect the law and universal principles for human rights in everything we do—from how we treat our colleagues to how we interact with candidates and clients. We expect the companies we work with to share these standards.

We’re committed to promoting ethical behavior within our operations, business partnerships, and risk management, ensuring the highest standards of ethics and integrity through our governance frameworks, education, and policies such as a best-in-class Employee Code of Conduct. We work to uphold compliance with applicable laws and regulations. We also support anonymous reporting of concerns through a phone- and web- based hotline.

Human Rights

We believe businesses must advocate for the protection of human rights. As a Participant in the UN Global Compact, RRA is embedding the program’s ten principles across our operations, so we can introduce work practices that protect the human rights of our colleagues as well as people throughout our value chain.

Our Employee Code of Conduct promotes a culture of inclusion and respect by detailing policies to prevent discrimination and harassment in our workplace. Our Supplier Code of Conduct outlines our expectations for our business partners to prevent discrimination and protect human rights and dignity in their working environments.

Data Security and Privacy

Data security and privacy are of the utmost importance at RRA. We maintain the trust of our clients, colleagues, and business partners by aligning with industry best practices to ensure that data is secure and safeguarded.

Information security is overseen by our Risk Committee, comprised of department heads and business leaders from across the firm. The committee undertakes risk assessment activities to identify and appropriately mitigate risks material to the business, including information security and data privacy concerns.

Data Security

We have embedded systems and processes in our practices to detect and prevent loss, corruption, or unauthorized access to client and company data. To maintain the highest levels of data security, we maintain ISO 27001 certification, a globally recognized third-party assurance on the security of our systems. We also implement strategies such as host-based detection and protection platforms, including scanning inbound and outbound emails and attachments and have a 24/7 SOC team monitoring for malicious content. Our ongoing training programs provide every colleague with the knowledge and skills needed to take part in enhancing our data security.

Data Privacy

We strive to be as transparent as possible in how we use candidate, client, and employee data. Privacy is essential to our business, which is why we are at the forefront of driving and adopting industry standards and best practices and ensuring compliance with applicable regulations such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Training

Colleague training is a critical component of our data security program. Starting with comprehensive New Hire Data Security training, we introduce our expectations for responsible and legally compliant data security from day one. On a monthly basis, our phishing campaigns provide real-time feedback to educate colleagues and inform the focus areas of subsequent trainings. In addition, our third-party administered Annual Awareness Training helps our colleagues continually learn and respond to emerging trends in data risks, storage, and security policies.

Sustainable Operations

Our approach to environmental sustainability focuses on reducing our negative impact on the planet and creating opportunities to improve environmental quality. We started this journey by learning how we could tackle the most significant contributors to our environmental footprint and helping our clients do the same.

We recognize our responsibility to manage our contributions to climate change. We have aligned with the latest climate science in formally committing to set a near-term science-based greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction target through the internationally recognized Science-Based Targets initiative (SBTi). Aligning with the SBTi’s target-setting criteria will require RRA to reach net zero emissions from our entire value chain, with a minimum reduction in absolute emissions of 90% by no later than 2050, focusing our efforts primarily on emissions reduction through decarbonization and limiting our dependence on carbon offsetting. We intend to achieve SBTi verification of our near-term and long-term targets in 2023.

Our SBTi commitments will require us to focus our emissions reductions in four key operational areas: Buildings, Waste, Supplier Engagement, and Business Travel.

The table and pie charts below provide a four-year view of our firm’s greenhouse gas emissions data. Pandemic-related changes in our operations in 2020 and 2021 reduced our overall GHG emissions by 45% and 53% respectively from our 2019 base year emissions. However, as the world returned to normalcy in 2022, we increased our emissions in Scopes 1, 2, and 3.

RRA, our Scope 1 GHG emissions are direct emissions from fuel combustion— both on-site in our offices and mobile combustion from our fleet vehicles—and from refrigerants used at the buildings where our offices are located. In 2022, Scope 1 emissions represented 1% of our carbon footprint. Our Scope 2 GHG emissions are indirect emissions from the energy we purchase for electricity, heating, and cooling.

In 2022, Scope 2 emissions represented 7% of our carbon footprint.

Like other professional services firms, our Scope 3 emissions—supply chain activities—comprise the largest portion of our carbon footprint. In other words, the source of most of our company’s emissions is the production of goods and services that we purchase from other companies.

At RRA, Scope 3 emissions are primarily related to business travel, as well as the goods and services that we purchase from vendors during travel and our everyday business operations. In 2022, Scope 3 emissions comprised 92% of our carbon footprint, an increase over 2020 and 2021 levels that can be attributed in part to our return to business travel. This data tells us that our path to net zero emissions by 2050 will require us to innovate and adapt our ways of working, our travel, and our purchasing habits so we can protect and regenerate the planet’s natural resources. Collaboration with our clients and business partners, including our suppliers, will be critical to our success.

Buildings

We aim to create working environments that are healthy for people and the planet. As a professional services firm, our real estate footprint presents our greatest opportunity for reducing our operational impact. Across our portfolio, we are committing to 100% energy usage from renewable sources by 2025 (either by renewable tariffs or RE100 compliant energy attribute certificates). We are working toward this goal through a building-by-building approach. We’ve also achieved resource efficiency benefits by optimizing our footprint for a hybrid workspace, which reduced our real estate footprint by 30% from a 2019 baseline.

We also see our office spaces as opportunities to make a positive contribution to the wellness of people and the planet. To advance our ideas, we will develop and implement an RRA Green Office Design Policy by the end of 2023, which will outline environmentally responsible guidance for office site selection, leasing, design, and vendor partners.

Waste

We want to reduce waste in everything we do. In our industry, e-waste—the computers, phones, and related electronics that are nearing the end of their useful life in our daily work—can create a significant waste stream, so we’ve set a goal of 100% diversion of e-waste from landfill by 2025. Critical to achieving this goal is the equipment disposal process that our Information Systems Department manages with support from each RRA office. Our key partner, ERI Direct, helps us ensure the secure disposal and recycling of our equipment, which in turn helps us to meet our clients’ e-waste landfill diversion goals.

By responsibly reusing and recycling 23,883 total pounds of electronics in 2022, we diverted the equivalent of 27 U.S. households’ annual garbage generation from disposal to beneficial reuse. Additionally, we prevented 174,267 pounds of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) emissions by properly reusing and recycling these electronics.

In many of our offices, colleagues are finding ways to reduce other forms of waste that are most meaningful in their office and communities, such as paper waste, plastic waste, and food waste.

Office Waste & Sustainability

London Office Spotlight
Colleagues at the RRA London office embarked on a month-long waste campaign to engage colleagues and reduce office waste. Each week of the campaign, the team introduced a new aspect of waste reduction. The campaign focus areas included communal waste bins, signage, and communication on appropriate waste disposal, and education on confidential waste recycling. While there’s more to do, this team engagement was a critical first step and a great example of how collaboration on sustainability issues can make a big impact.

Singapore Office Spotlight
The Singapore office waste initiative was sparked when colleagues realized just how much office waste was generated each day at lunch. The team acted and issued reusable lunch boxes to support the avoidance of single-use plastic container waste. Over time, colleagues began to change habits and achieve tangible waste reduction.

In the first three months of the initiative, the Singapore office:

• Saved 568 single-use plastic containers
• Reduced 11kg of trash*
• Increased team engagement and collaboration

_{*Based on estimated weight of a 750ML single-use plastic container}

Business Travel

As we emerge from the pandemic and return to more frequent travel, we continue to evolve our policies and practices to help us stay connected while reducing our carbon footprint. Our short-term goal is to develop an action plan for reducing environmental impact of business travel by the end of 2023. Our plan will include at least three opportunities to reduce travel-related emission and will leverage lessons we learned while conducting business during the pandemic.

This goal has sparked innovative ideas on how to bring emissions reduction considerations into our travel and events, add sustainable criteria into hotel and airline selection, and consider long-term travel adaptations that can help us connect with clients while also supporting our shared net zero ambitions. By adopting responsible travel practices, we can show leadership on new approaches to staying connected with clients, colleagues, and business partners—while also respecting the planet.

Supplier Engagement

We recognize that our purchasing power can make a positive impact on the planet. Collaborating with supplier partners on shared environmental impact goals will be a critical step on our net zero path way. We are committed to launching a supplier engagement program by engaging with five of our largest suppliers on environmental data and policies by the end of 2023. We are also planning pilot programs to expand our supply chain engagement.