Industry Voice: Setting a positive example for the channel by David Watts, TD SYNNEX

David Watts, senior vice president and regional managing director, UK and Ireland, TD SYNNEX (pictured below), says that by publishing its annual Global Citizenship Report, TD SYNNEX is giving itself goals to which it can aspire and, hopefully, encourage others to do the same.

In September, TD SYNNEX published its latest Global Citizenship Report detailing our commitments on environmental, social and governance and the progress we’ve made in these areas. But what does that really mean to you and your customers? Why does it matter to the UK channel?

In my view, it’s about setting a positive example in our industry. For TD SYNNEX, being more sustainable, being a fairer and more equitable employer, setting high ethical standards and holding ourselves to them, and everything that goes with that, is the right thing to do. And this fully aligns with our values as a company.

Doing the right thing

As one of the largest distributors in the market, TD SYNNEX has a degree of responsibility, not only to introduce partners to emerging technologies and new opportunities, but also to chart a progressive course on issues that matter to us all, such as sustainability and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I).

Sustainability and carbon reduction have now become central issues for all organisations. They exert at least some influence on strategic decision-making in all other areas of activity – in operations, manufacturing, R&D, warehousing and distribution. New policies and directions can’t be taken without sustainability and carbon impact being considered.

Similarly, DE&I has become integral to our business and many others. It’s right and important to treat our all co-workers equally and fairly – that matters to our customers, partners, and stakeholders, and makes us a better business.

We are deeply committed to upholding our core values of inclusion, collaboration, integrity, and excellence, and these form the foundation of our approach to corporate governance. This year, we have introduced a Global Human Rights Policy and started the process of self-certification in alignment with the EU-US Data Privacy Framework Principles. We’ve harmonized cybersecurity controls and invested in an automated platform to track and mitigate risks.

Open commitments

As well as actually doing all of this, it’s important to be open about our commitments and activities and how we are progressing towards our stated goals. The Global Citizenship Report is one of the most important ways in which we do this and while it obviously takes a worldwide perspective, the report also focuses on many activities and achievements of TD SYNNEX country operations.

For example, this year’s report mentioned that TD SYNNEX UK&I won the CRN Women & Diversity in Channel Awards 2023, Gender Parity Award, and that we were one of ten TD SYNNEX operations to be Great Place to Work certified. It also included a nice photo of our 23 co-workers who completed a 13-mile hike over the Seven Sisters on England’s south coast to raise awareness of the contribution made by women to the business and the IT industry as a whole. The Elevate Yourself 2024 Challenge was organised by our Elevate business resource group, which drives and supports the empowerment of women.

Activities like these and the Global Citizenship Report are an outward demonstration of our commitments and a signal of our intent to set, and to go on setting, what we believe is a great example in the industry. We still have a long way to go – we are well aware of that – and we continue to push forward with multiple initiatives.

Making an impact

Our ambitious emissions-reduction targets have been approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi), we attained silver EcoVadis rating and achieved a combined Scope 1 and 2 emissions reduction of approximately 30 per cent. We increased the amount of electricity derived from renewable energy sources by approximately 31 per cent.

We are working hard to make an impact on our Scope 3 Greenhouse Gas emissions, and talking to leading hardware vendors about how we can help them, their partners and end user customers take a more circular approach to product replacement. These are really challenging areas for the channel and the industry and it’s only by working together that we can expect to come up with good, workable solutions that make sense for everyone.

This is why it matters that TD SYNNEX provides a detailed update on the progress we are making with respect to ESG.

We cannot and do not claim to be leading the way in every area of ESG. But our Global Citizenship Report does at least set some kind of example and may even provide that spark that starts others thinking about how to approach areas like sustainability and DE&I.

This article is sponsored by TD SYNNEX.