OPERATIONS

Our People

Our people share a common passion for technical excellence and innovation, which is at the core of our culture. To maximize the power of this passion, Golder provides our people with a supportive work environment, where they have the opportunity to reach their fullest potential, and where diversity and inclusion are valued, free from discrimination and harassment.

Golder is a place where collaboration and innovation are fostered, creating a unique culture where we build lifelong relationships that are strengthened with each passing day. We prioritize leading and engaging our people to help them make their best contribution. This is strengthened through global procedures, including our recently-launched High Performance and Contribution program.

DIVERSITY

Golder recognizes the significant value of employee diversity and an inclusive workplace. Golder has a diverse operational footprint with an established local presence in multiple geographies, addressing the needs of our clients through local expertise with global support.

With the introduction of a more structured Global HCM system, Golder is in a better position to harness in the area of diversity. Through 2018 Golder will consolidate this work to assess which issues are of particular relevance to our employees and achieve a measureable impact on our culture.

Golder will conduct a series of workshops as a pilot program starting in Q1 2018, and learnings from these sessions will be shared with the wider organization to support a global program for diversity and inclusion.

Tenure

TRAINING

Ensuring that employees have sufficient skill, knowledge and experience to perform their role is a critical goal for Golder, and is driving the development and roll-out of a comprehensive training scheme.

At Golder, we capture three types of learning and development: experience, exposure and education. By going beyond structured, single event-based training, this approach has greater impact and enhanced retention of knowledge and skills, and brings a focus on outcomes and performance, enabling Golder to better invest in its people.

Our culture of learning and development begins immediately upon joining Golder. Onboarding is the mechanism through which employees are acclimated to the organization, or a new role, and includes the necessary training, skills and behaviors to initially perform their role. It is designed to support the employees to accelerate their engagement, promote their integration into the Golder culture and processes, and maximize their effectiveness and productivity.

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Courses completed in 2016
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Courses completed in 2017

HEALTH, SAFETY, SECURITY, & ENVIRONMENT

At Golder, the commitment to our people begins when we enter into an employment agreement and extends across their career journey.

Golder is creating a culture of interdependence, built on trust, teamwork and shared ownership of HSSE. We are encouraging mutual caring for the safety and wellbeing of others, organizational pride, and world-class safety performance. Golder maintains a progressive discipline program as a positive reinforcement of desired behaviors.

Golder is committed to effectively managing risk and continual improvement. We embed attention to health, safety, security and environment in all that we do. We identify and plan appropriate control strategies before we issue proposals, deliver services, and throughout each work day. We expect the same of our subcontractors and clients. In addition, through our “Work Safe, Home Safe” program, we encourage safe behavior during off-hours as well.

All employees have the right to refuse unsafe work and are empowered to take appropriate action to intervene where there are uncontrolled hazards that are likely to result in imminent harm to a person and/or to the environment.

R U Ok?

Golder employees across the globe come together and ask, R U Ok?

STRATEGIC IMPROVEMENTS

Golder identified HSSE-specific priorities within our 2020 Strategy that resulted in 2020 objectives and tactics for 2016 and 2017, including fatality prevention, visible felt leadership (VFL) and promotion of personal health and well being. Various components of our strategic improvements related to HSSE are as follows.

Learnings

The learnings database provides a platform and system for the reporting of hazardous conditions, near misses, incidents including workplace injuries and illnesses, as well as commendations for demonstrating….

Visible Felt Leadership

Golder has set out the objective that, by 2020, every Golder employee will demonstrate proactive visible felt leadership (VFL) in HSSE. In 2016, Golder defined VFL to be “observable behavior that….

New Best Practice Guidelines

In 2017, the review of the Golder Environmental Issues Register identified two high risk environmental issues….

OUR CARBON FOOTPRINT

CO2 Emissions Total in 2016

Across our operations, we are committed to the responsible use of energy and energy resources. We are also committed to the continual improvement of our facilities to optimize energy consumption. In each of our geographic regions, Golder tracks energy use in our workplaces and this is reported into our carbon data collection database.

Golder operations and work activities are dependent upon the use of energy and fuels for travel by air, rail, road and ship, and office, laboratory and warehouse utilities.

At the conclusion of 2016, Golder had 6,063 employees in 160 offices and laboratories in 39 countries. Our staff facilities occupied approximately 200,000 square meters around the world. Our 2016 electricity usage increased by 17% over the previous year, while our total energy usage, which includes natural gas, heat and steam, and electricity, remained the same. In 2016, our total energy usage intensity had a small reduction to 20.6 GJ/person; however, the occupied workspace intensity decreased by 8% to 0.62 GJ/m2

During 2016, we travelled approximately 92 million km to support and deliver services to our clients. This compares to 80 million km in 2015 and represents a 16% increase in total business travel (i.e., air, road and rail travel). Our business travel emissions intensity was approximately 1.6 tons CO2e km/person, with an overall business travel reduction of 15%.

Golder maintains a fleet of vehicles in order to facilitate business travel and to improve the safety, maintenance and environmental sustainability of vehicle travel. Carbon emissions associated with the fleet operations represented 4% of our total emissions.

While 28% of our 2016 emissions were associated with employee business travel in airplanes, vehicles, and trains, an additional 32% of emissions resulted from employee commuting. The estimated commuting emissions intensity was 1.9 tons CO2e/person.

Golder supports the more widespread application of practices for reducing carbon emissions such as the following:

  • LEED offices (including water conservation, renewable energy, etc.)
  • Office locations with reduced footprints (including swing spaces with available services, etc.)
  • Travel alternatives
  • Continued improvement in use of virtual meetings
  • Work-from-home agreements
  • Waste recycling
  • Offset use

Golder is targeting a 15% reduction by 2020 over the 2015 base year based on per-person calculations. In 2017, Golder purchased 700 tons of carbon credits as an offset to the 2016 emissions of 35,117 tons. Emissions data for 2017 will be presented in the 2018 report.