Our Mission is to Identify and Protect Premises Products and People.
Our Vision is to be the market leader in all our businesses in order to achieve sustainable long-term shareholder value.
Our Approach to Sustainability
Sustainability is nothing new to Brady. Looking for ways to reduce our environmental footprint, protect employee safety and contribute to our local communities have always been a part of our business. For example, we’ve been working on energy reduction initiatives since 2000, seriously tracking safety data since 1998 and providing college scholarships to outstanding students in our community through our Academic All-Stars program since 1990.
However, it is only recently that we’ve formalized our commitments to sustainability. In 2011, Brady President and CEO Frank M. Jaehnert signed Brady’s first Global Sustainability Policy. This policy emphasizes that “sustainable value” as referred to in our company vision is not limited to financial value, but includes environmental and social value as well, and defines our 3 pillars of sustainability: Sustainable Company, Sustainable Customers and Sustainable Communities.
We also established a governance structure to direct our activities in each of those pillars. We developed focus areas and began collecting baseline data within each pillar. In the Sustainable Customers pillar we focused our energy looking at ways to effectively integrate design-for-environment (DfE) principles into our new product development process. We also set performance goals in our Sustainable Company and Sustainable Communities pillars. Our objective is to integrate sustainability into every aspect of our business and not manage it as a separate initiative. The areas of waste, energy, greenhouse gases, natural resources, safety, product and service to the community represent our greatest material impacts.
In 2011, we also added “sustainability” as a new core value at Brady. We call it “Protect Our Future.”
Our Governance Structure
Previously, the Sustainable Communities pillar of Brady’s Sustainability Strategy was focused on the company’s philanthropic efforts, in particular the activities of the Brady Corporation Foundation, as well as the charitable gifts and employee volunteers of the Brady Corporation. In 2012, we reorganized our governance structure by placing our “Life at Brady” management systems, which focus on our commitments to our employees, under the responsibility of the Sustainable Communities Council to ensure alignment with the strategic sustainability priorities of the organization.
Brady’s Sustainability Steering Team was put in place to oversee the strategy and implementation of the program. To ensure that responsibility for managing and reporting on progress rests at the most senior levels in the business, the Steering Team includes several members of our Executive Team, including the Treasurer, Chief Technology Officer (CTO), Chief Information Officer (CIO), Senior Vice President of Human Resources and Vice President of Global Operations.
Within each pillar, a Sustainability Council has been established to set goals and objectives and regularly review progress. These Councils meet regularly and are led by one of the Executives from the Steering Team.
Our Director of Sustainability sits on the Sustainability Councils of all three pillars to ensure integration, find synergies within the corporate sustainability strategy and provide a quarterly report to the Steering Team.
In 2012, The Sustainable Communities Council was expanded to include the Regional (EMEA, APAC, and Americas) and Corporate Human Resource (HR) Directors.
