Environmental, Social & Governance

This policy was updated on: March 4, 2025

ESG creates real opportunities for property owners, developers, occupiers and investors to achieve a positive impact on the environment and society.

Introduction 

Rock Commercial is one of the leading property consultancies in the Channel Islands providing property advisory services to investors, developers, occupiers and other stakeholders principally in Guernsey.

Our mission is to make our clients’ businesses thrive. We attempt to challenge the status quo and find new ways to think and do things that shrug off convention and bureaucracy.

Values

Our values are integral to everything we do. We deliver for our clients, occupiers, and associated businesses by acting responsibly in every scenario we are involved in.

Our values are:

  • Innovation: we challenge the status quo
  • Empowerment: we put people first
  • Transparency: we are accountable and report on progress
  • Collaboration: we collaborate with our people, clients, and the local community of Guernsey where we principally operate

We seek to deliver positive impact across four pillars:

  1. People
  2. Business
  3. Environment
  4. Community

Context 

We acknowledge a notable shift in the ESG agenda, understand climate-related material and physical risks to both the business and the buildings we manage, and are confident in our capacity to enhance the property sector’s performance positively. Mere emphasis on profitability and growth is insufficient for the property sector. Our clients and occupiers now expect us, as an entity, to pursue these objectives optimally: effecting positive Environmental change, generating Social Value, and upholding good Governance.

Purpose and Scope 

This ESG policy sets out how we take ESG issues into account across our business and in all of our interactions with the world around us – the way we manage our operations, deliver client services, treat our people, engage with the community in which we work, and the expectations we set for our suppliers.

It sets out our goals, commitments, and ambition, and recognises our desire to lead in everything we do. On ESG this means setting stretching targets for ourselves which go well beyond mere statutory compliance and developing the measurement tools, resources, and corporate culture required to achieve them.

ESG Goals 

We have consistently done our best to make strides in ESG, showcasing best practices. Now, we’re committed to embedding these successes across all operations, prioritizing innovation and best practices in ESG across our staff members, business, environment, and community systematically and measurably.

We aim for our ambitious culture, positive leadership, and strong governance structures to enable our company to:

  1. Be a great place to work, enabling ambitious people who share our values to make a difference for our clients and occupiers and within the business.
  2. Deliver best in class, innovative solutions to ESG issues for our clients.
  3. Doing our bit across the supply chain to achieve the goal of making Guernsey carbon neutral by 2050.
  4. Intentionally deliver Social Value, meet our commitments, and measure our impact.

Our ESG Commitments

  • Our People:
  • Deliver a best-in-class experience for our staff across pay, benefits, development opportunities, employment practices and in consideration of their health and wellbeing.
  • Develop and implement a holistic framework to encourage and include diverse voices at all levels of our business, including an ESG taskforce.
  • Ensure our recruitment and performance management processes explicitly include consideration of diversity and inclusion, and alignment to our values.
  • Deliver training, guidance, and adequate ESG-specialist resources to support all of our staff members in developing their understanding of ESG matters, building their confidence to discuss such issues with clients, and identify opportunities to integrate ESG into our service offerings.
  • Deliver training and guidance to every member of staff regarding the contents of this policy, and our expectations in terms of our positive culture and respectful treatment of all people with whom we come into contact through our work.
  • Our Business:
  • Review our client service offerings to identify opportunities to enhance ESG integration and create a strategy to deliver enhanced service offerings across the property lifecycle.
  • Help our clients, occupiers and their stakeholders anticipate and respond to evolving ESG requirements and opportunities by providing insights based on our delivery experience.
  • Seek out strategic partners with whom we can deliver innovative solutions to ESG matters.
  • Leverage best-in-class technology and data management systems to optimise the gathering, measurement, analysis and reporting of real world ESG outcomes delivered through our client service.
  • Create cross sector working groups to innovate existing service lines with the integration of ESG.
  • Ensure that contracted social value commitments are delivered to our clients and relevant to their needs.
  • Our Environment:
  • Assist Guernsey achieve its goal of being carbon neutral by 2050.
  • Roll-out energy efficiency measures in our office.
  • Improve our resource efficiency and develop a quantified pathway for waste reduction and water efficiency improvements across our operations.
  • Foster employee sustainable living, by promoting employee benefits such as cycle to work.
  • Encourage the prioritisation of biodiversity through education and projects for clients.
  • Our Community:
  • Make a positive impact within the community where we operate through active engagement with stakeholders and our dedication to delivering volunteering opportunities and pro bono work.
  • Ensure our social value activity aligns to the specific needs of Guernsey.
  • Establish long-term partnerships with charities, leveraging our in-house expertise to provide skilled support.
  • Nurture talent and support skill development in our local communities.
  • Implement comprehensive social value awareness training to ensure that every employee is equipped to contribute effectively to drive positive impact amongst community stakeholders.
  • Collaborate openly with peers and industry partners to overcome barriers in key ESG challenges like reducing carbon emissions and enhancing diversity in our industry. Seek synergies with clients and stakeholders to boost positive social impact.

ESG Integration into our Operations

  • Apply a values-based assessment of all supplier relationships, making our values known to all suppliers, aligning our procurement and performance management processes to our ESG values, and seeking to engage with and support our supply chain to bring them up to the standards which we set for ourselves.
  • Implement a framework for the business;
    • our operations, relating to Our People, Our Environment and Our Community.
    • consideration of our performance on health & wellbeing, empowerment, inclusivity, culture, engagement, and alignment with our values.
    • incorporating diversity and inclusion across our workforce.
    • consideration of our operational performance on energy efficiency, carbon emissions, waste generation and recycling rates, and water efficiency.
    • the philanthropic activities undertaken by our staff.
  • Make public commitments in relation to ESG and our operations through the local press and social media.
  • Review and determine to which industry bodies and standards we should align our business.