Message from Brady's President and CEO Frank M. Jaehnert
Welcome to our 2012 Sustainability Report Update.
In 2012, we continued to improve upon our sustainability strategies and execution of those strategies in our three pillars: Sustainable Company, Sustainable Customers and Sustainable Communities. More specifically, in 2012 our efforts for a more sustainable company focused on data integrity and local systems improvements; in the sustainable customers area we further refined our processes and completed integration of our Design for Environment principles into our New Product Development processes; and we more strongly integrated our own internal community into the sustainable communities pillar by adding our global human resource leaders to the sustainable communities governance team, expanding our employee volunteer program and bringing our "life at Brady" programs and initiatives into the sustainable communities area.
A new feature of this update is our "Report Out" contest, where employees were asked to submit their nominations for success stories and accomplishments in each of our sustainability pillars. I hope that you enjoy reading the winning submissions from around the world, as well as the rest of the update for 2012.
You can easily see the 2012 updates by clicking on the hang-tag at the top of each page, and clicking again to return to the full page view that includes 2011 information that remains current. Should you wish to reference the full 2011 report, a button at the right of the top navigation bar will take you there.
Both the full 2011 report and the 2012 update demonstrate Brady's on-going commitment to sustainability and Brady's core values, in particular "Protect Our Future" and "Teamwork."
I'm happy to welcome you to Brady's inaugural sustainability report. The theme for this report is 'Protect Our Future' which was taken from our list of company values. In 2011, we specifically added 'Protect Our Future' to our stated core values because we wanted our key stakeholders – our customers, our employees, our investors and the communities in which we live and work – to know that focusing on sustainability is an essential part of who we are and how we conduct our business. At Brady, sustainability is not a 'flavor of the month' or something we've embraced because it is fashionable to do so. As you'll see in this report, sustainability is a way of life at Brady.
While some of the highlights of 2011 were formalizing our sustainability policy and executing on a specific strategy for driving sustainability objectives throughout our organization, Brady has always been a company that worked to do the right thing and focused on continuous improvement – which is really what sustainability is all about. For example, things like providing our employees around the world with the same high-quality working conditions, and investing in equipment that reduces emissions and saves energy even in areas of the world where manufacturing norms and governments do not require us to do so, are nothing new for Brady.
Today, sustainability at Brady is more than just a concept, it is a strategic priority. Why? Because in addition to being the right thing to do, it also makes good economic sense in many ways:
- being a socially responsible company helps us to attract and retain the best employees – those who are passionate about their work and their world
- innovating with our customers' sustainability needs in mind helps to further distinguish us in the marketplace
- contributing to projects and programs that strengthen our communities helps to ensure a solid workforce for tomorrow and provide a higher quality of life for our employees and their families today
- and working to cut waste, water and energy consumption brings positive returns to our bottom line in the long run.
In short, at Brady we know that sustainability and strong financial performance are not mutually exclusive.
In this report, you'll see examples of how our sustainability strategy is being implemented at Brady. Among other achievements in 2011, our Sustainable Company team implemented programs that reduced our overall carbon footprint; our Sustainable Customers team, composed of R&D scientists, engineers, and marketing professionals, defined and piloted DfE (design for environment) principles within our new product development process; and our Sustainable Communities team broadened the focus and reach of our corporate charitable contributions and employee volunteer programs to provide more services to more people.
While we made good progress in many areas of sustainability this year, we know that we have more work to do, in particular in further rolling out our sustainability programs globally. Most of our sustainability activities have been focused in the United States, and we are still in the early stages of fully expanding to our operations in other parts of the world. Our global Sustainability Council now has standardized metrics and is collecting data globally, but we need to continue to engage and inspire our teams both inside and outside the US to embrace our sustainability strategies and continuous improvement efforts.
I hope you enjoy reading about our 2011 achievements in this report. None of this would have been possible without the commitment and dedication of Brady employees around the world. I thank them all for their efforts and look forward to their continued success in "Protecting the Future" for all of us.
Frank M. Jaehnert
President and CEO
