We are delighted to share our second Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) report and the first we’re sharing publicly. As a charity, sustainability is fundamental to how we deliver our purpose, ensuring that the value we create is reinvested in widening access to drinks education.
Sustainability sits at the heart of our work and underpins our strategic commitments across the organisation. We're proud of the progress we have made over the last year.
Environment
We continue to focus on reducing our environmental impact through operational improvements and the integration of sustainability into our education offer.
- We reduced WSET’s environmental impact through initiatives such as introducing digital certificates and switching our London offices to renewable energy tariffs. These steps helped us cut our carbon emissions by 10% over the year.
- We delivered a Sustainability Industry Talk series on our Global Events Hub with 3,000+ people viewing sessions live or on demand globally. You can watch the talks here.
Social
- We continued to build a welcoming, empathetic and inspiring culture that empowers our people to innovate and thrive. Over the year, we reduced our gender pay gap from 8% to 4% and we increased participation in our employee engagement survey by 10% to 87% with overall engagement rising by 1.4% to 74%.
- We’re particularly proud of the progress we’ve made with our social impact programme. We supported more than 500 people in 10 countries, working with 27 partners around the world to support access to drinks education. You can read more about our social impact programme here.
One example includes our scholarship programme in Angola, delivered in partnership with Sogrape Wine Academy and the Gérard Basset Foundation. You can read more about this project here along with other stories on our website.
Governance
- We developed and implemented AI guidelines and provided data literacy and AI training to all employees.
- To strengthen financial oversight, we recruited Andrew Paynter – former PwC partner, to join our Board of Trustees and lead the finance subcommittee.
- We re-established our Health and Safety Committee.
We invite you read the full ESG report for FY25, available to download here.
