The year 2021 has been a significant one. Never before has the need to create a more sustainable, inclusive world been more relevant – as governments, communities and businesses continue to transform and adapt to a more digitally connected reality. However, ensuring no one is left behind remains one of society’s biggest challenges.
Addressing sustainability holistically is key to achieving positive outcomes for everyone. Climate change impacts everyone and everything, and it disproportionately impacts the poorest and most vulnerable, amplifying global inequality. At Micro Focus, our aim is to make sustainable and responsible business core to the way we operate. From how we manage relationships with employees, suppliers, customers and local communities; to how we play our part in shifting to a lower carbon economy and reducing the effects of climate change, as well as how we govern our business. This is driven by Micro Focus INSPIRE, our company-wide Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) program.
In further demonstrating our commitment to sustainable and responsible business, this year Micro Focus aligned to support several of the United Nations Sustainability Development Goals (UN SDGs), a universal call to action to end poverty, protect the planet and improve the lives and prospects of everyone, everywhere. This is underpinned by our recently published Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) and Global Environmental policy statements, available here. Our support of the UN SDGs is also driven by our social purpose to help equip communities with the right skills to be successful in their digital futures.
At Micro Focus, our employees play a key part in bringing our social purpose to life; and to support this all employees receive four days a year to volunteer to make positive impacts in their communities. Over the last year, employees have taken almost 2,000 volunteering days – using their time to clear litter from beaches, cities and community parks; share their skills to help empower society’s most vulnerable people; and to help many who are digitally excluded get connected and thrive.
Our Pledge to Do An Act of Green
In celebrating Earth Day on April 22, Micro Focus pledged to encourage and inspire sustainable actions – because we believe we all have a role to play in looking after our environment. Sustainability and climate change is important for everyone to understand, so to support this we introduced a new Sustainability Education Program, available to all employees. In addition, all employees were invited to ‘Pledge to Do an Act of Green’ and make a commitment to take action to help ‘Restore Our Earth’ – the 2021 Earth Day theme.
Volunteering Goes Virtual
To make volunteering easy and accessible, and to help employees stay connected while many continue to work from home, Micro Focus introduced a global ‘Virtual Volunteering for Teams’ program to support non-profits, including several of our charity partners, and enable teams to come together to make positive impacts. Over the last six months, more than 1,000 employees have taken part in the program – coming together to join in over 160 virtual volunteering events.
Our Ambition to Inspire a Million Lives
At Micro Focus, we believe in the strength of collaboration and teaming to achieve positive impacts and meaningful outcomes. It’s this purpose that motivated our ambition to Inspire a Million Lives – a goal to support communities around the world, and in particular those affected by COVID-19, by partnering with a variety of non-profits and charities. The 12-month initiative, launched in June, has seen us build meaningful relationships with charity partners and enable a variety of volunteering opportunities.
Reducing Our Environmental Impact
Technology can play a key role in helping to reduce an organization’s environmental impact. As well as helping our customers address their carbon footprint and adopt carbon friendly IT strategies such as enabling greater efficiency and longer life from their existing technology, Micro Focus is committed to improving its own environmental footprint and supporting the transition to a low carbon business
In demonstrating this, Micro Focus teamed up with Atos at our annual Universe 2021 event to discuss how technology can drive sustainable business value. Watch the video discussion and read how Micro Focus deployed its own solutions to automate its own virtual server migration project.
Earlier this year Micro Focus joined the Low Carbon Patent Pledge, alongside JPMorgan Chase and Majid Al Futtaim, to help combat climate change by making key patents freely available to anyone using low carbon technologies. In addition, we signed Canada’s first Sustainable IT Pledge – the CIO Strategy Council’s Sustainable IT Pledge – to help reduce emissions from digital technologies.
Our employees play a key part in helping to reduce our environmental impact, from our software engineers to our customer-facing and business support teams. This year, Micro Focus introduced its newest employee resource group (ERG) called PLANET, dedicated to sustainability awareness and advocacy.
Our Actions Today Impact Tomorrow
It’s our actions today that will help shape a sustainable, inclusive future for all. This year’s COP26 reminded the world that collaboration is critical to delivering sustainable outcomes.
Together with our employees, customers, partners, suppliers and society, we are working to reduce our environmental impact and inspire sustainable actions that have long-term impacts. Because we know the world we will experience tomorrow depends on what we do today.
