We are excited to express Synpulse’s continued support for the UN Global Compact. As we undergo a transition of power within our organization during this unprecedented year for the world, it is clear to us the importance of our ongoing commitment to these ten principles in 2021.

While the pandemic may have brought some pressing issues to the fore, we are happy to enumerate the ways in which our organization has continued to embody the ethos of the compact this past year in this report, under Christoph’s leadership. We have also identified areas of improvement that we plan to address this year and beyond, so that our business goals are better aligned with the principles. At a high level, in 2020 we focused on building:

Finding areas of improvement by analyzing the gap between the current state of relevant policies across different offices within the Synpulse Group and the standards expected from a signatory of the compact

Identifying our key business and client stakeholders who helped formulate a clear strategy and implementation plan for the target state

Centralizing and streamlining all our social responsibility efforts through standardized principles of commitment across the major areas of impact and major locations of operation

Recognizing measurable outcomes across each area of focus to ensure effective benchmarking over time 

To continue the impact of these actions into 2021, we have tasked:

1. The back office and HR teams to formally institutionalize the data and reporting needed to ensure clear tracking and accountability across all relevant metrics

2. Relevant teams to focus on greater and targeted communication amongst employees regarding sustainability policies, capacity-building opportunities, grievances reporting and other benefits to increase adoption internally

3. Senior country leadership and their global partners to review of major policies and benefits, e.g. insurance plans and travel policies, to better embody the UNGC principles and remain market-competitive

As we move into 2021 and continue to battle with this pandemic, we are hopeful for the world and committed to playing our role in supporting the communities around us. Building Beyond Synpulse.

Konrad Niggli and Yves Roesti
Managing Partners and CEOs

As a part of the foundational year of 2020, Synpulse’s focus was to ensure that the policy and data infrastructure was available for the organization to personify the UNGC principles within its business. The following actions and findings helped make the company more conducive to move closer to its target state as a signatory.

Human Rights

A thorough review was conducted for all channels available for clients, employees and other stakeholders to report any human rights violations that they may witness. Many of these channels were informal or lacked employee endorsements. Such gaps have been identified and will be bolstered as a part of actions taken within 2021

100% of current and ongoing contracts with clients and other investment agreements continue to be screened for any human rights violations at major locations of operations

The annual compliance training, mandatory for all employees, was enhanced to include the basic human rights standards that all employees are expected to embody at offices and client sites

Through the global Corporate Social Responsibility teams, employees have ongoing opportunities to contribute time, monetary and in-kind contributions through events with local socially-driven organizations. In 2020, the company donated USD 34000 across all locations, with an average of USD 70.82/employee. While monetary contributions and overall participation are recorded, not all offices are able to track the total number of hours of service donated by employees in 2020, a gap to be addressed in 2021 reporting

Stemming out of the US office, there has been a global push to identify and task local Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) teams with programming and actions that ensure promotion of equality amongst all employees. Global infrastructure was implemented within the firm’s current HR system to be able to record employee participation for all DE&I events starting in 2021

A crucial limitation that teams globally faced during this implementation effort in 2020 was the inability to quickly and easily report on fundamental metrics identified across each category, despite there being fragmented mechanisms to capture this information. This resulted in manual efforts and multiple man hours across each office to pull together the information needed to complete this evaluation. A more centralized data collection process is expected to be implemented in the following areas by local leadership and the back office in 2021. Ongoing updates to our HR systems by senior management and the new leadership can be used:

1. By employees to report on human rights and labor standard grievances to allow for better tracking and quicker resolution
2. To better define and track employees hired from the local communities at the senior management level for continued engagement within their communities
3. To capture income data globally in a way that allows for better data segmentation across the various demographic identifiers, such as age and gender

All employees are allowed 40 hours annually to use for capacity-building through Synpulse’s academy program. These include business-relevant courses offered through trained employees or external vendors. On a case-by-case basis, each location also has annual budget set aside for employees to pursue courses outside of the academy catalog that are expected to build skills for a current or potential client project

100% of employee reviews and feedbacks are standardized across all offices through the performance review program that occurs in Q1, Q3 and at the end of the year with line managers to ensure consensus between the firm and the employee regarding career development and performance goals. The APAC and US offices have already introduced an additional mentorship programs as an opportunity for employees to engage in long term career development within their chosen industry

A benchmarking study was conducted in 2018 to measure the competitiveness of salaries and benefits within each local office. Since then, strides have been made towards equitable remuneration across demographic identifiers. Almost all locations of Synpulse offices have self-reported that salaries are based on pre-determined title brackets and not gender. The new HR system being introduced in 2021 will allow the organization to report concrete numbers on income-parity by various demographic identifiers across locations and identify any areas of improvement.

As Synpulse has grown, there has been a greater push in the more recent years to hire senior management officials from local communities to allow for the office to be more embedded in its surrounding. For this year, the team focused on defining and creating greater awareness of this metric across all offices.

It was also recognized that for the company to truly endorse the compact, all relevant stakeholders must be kept apprised of all the ongoing changes and the company’s target state across the various initiatives under this umbrella.

Leadership training was conducted for the upper management of the organization to allow for easier and quicker flow of information and feedback. As this initiative grows, there may be room to use this feedback mechanism to enhance the channels for seeking advice

Greater awareness and push are needed globally for employees to make use of the academy resources available for them for continued capacity-building and knowledge ownership amongst employees

Increased trust in existing grievance mechanisms, including the local PoT, is needed across all offices so that employees recognize this safe space to report unwanted incidents of conflict

More explicit endorsement by senior management is required to move the needle on reporting, tracking and reducing the company’s carbon footprint once the pandemic and zero travelling is over. This in order to keep some of the efficiency gains that proofed that part of business can be done remotely.

Local CSR leads will explore more ways to engage employees and increase CSR event participation

Given the nature of Synpulse’s business, travel remains the greatest source of emissions for all locations5. Policies were implemented in early 2020 that required line managers and senior managers to approve any client travel above a certain dollar amount. This would allow for an additional review of the need for this trip from strictly business perspective. Synpulse also only reimburses employees for economy tickets to reduce the footprint of each trip

For travel to and from offices, in some offices HR provides benefits that encourage the use of public transportation. For locations where public transportation is not an option, fuels costs are only reimbursed when employees make use of a carpool. In addition, because of the pandemic employees have been provided with more support to build the infrastructure they need to be able to work remotely in a comfortable manner and reduce work commute overall

A global assessment was conducted around the waste accumulated at each office because of the food served at monthly office meetings. While the food-ordering model varies across offices, the team was unable to implement a centralized approach to limit food waste across all locations. Local event planners were notified, however, to ensure that orders and consumption was tracked overtime and doggy packs made available for employees to reduce waste6

All major locations are encouraged to recycle waste generated within their offices. Currently there is no global mandate by Synpulse enforcing this practice. However, many local offices, such as US, Singapore, and Switzerland, already practice recycling due to local government regulations or already ingrained as local best practices

There was a firm-wide effort to consolidate the data needed to be able to measure Synpulse’s carbon footprint across eight major locations. Sustainability coordinators across each office were able to identify the source of the data for better tracking and reporting in 2021. The US office is on its third year or reporting carbon emissions, providing a precedent for other offices to follow for collective benchmarking and potential footprint reduction

Green energy has been identified as a long-term limitation for Synpulse since most of the office locations are currently rented and therefore give the organization limited control over the energy source used. The majority of Synpulse offices pay a flat fee for electricity as a part of the rent and therefore cannot track and reduce consumption by kWh. No additional steps are expected for 2021. However, HR is expected to add this consideration to the criteria of lease assessments in the next round of renewals

A crucial limitation that teams globally faced during this implementation effort in 2020 was the inability to quickly and easily report on fundamental metrics identified across each category, despite there being fragmented mechanisms to capture this information. This resulted in manual efforts and multiple man hours across each office to pull together the information needed to complete this evaluation. A more centralized data collection process is expected to be implemented in the following areas by local leadership and the back office in 2021. Ongoing updates to our HR systems by senior management and the new leadership can be used:

To report on any environmental metric across geographies. As mentioned, the current process is very manual and not centralized at all. Therefore, travel managers and HR across all locations need a system and standardized policies across reporting for Synpulse to be able to complete any benchmarking and reduction in its carbon footprint

More explicit endorsement by senior management is required to move the needle on reporting, tracking and reducing the company’s carbon footprint once the pandemic and zero travelling is over. This in order to keep some of the efficiency gains that proofed that part of business can be done remotely.

There is a need for a more comprehensive policy within Synpulse regarding the tracking and reduction of waste and increased recycling for each office. While in-person interactions and meetings have been limited because of the coronavirus, certain company-wide practices, such as the monthly River Meetings, have been identified as easy culprits of additional waste that can be monitored and reduced. Under this policy, offices should practice waste recycling irrespective of local regulations

All employees are required to declare any conflicts of interest before starting new projects or interacting with clients. Restrictions are in place to limit trading in client and vendor securities to further limit any unethical behavior

The annual compliance training, mandatory for all employees, was enhanced to include a review of anti-bribery, conflict of interest and insider trading policies that all employees are expected to embody at offices and client sites

Internal and external mechanisms for seeking advice on ethical and lawful behavior and matters related to organizational integrity and harassment/discrimination were identified and highlighted, such as helplines, advice lines, escalation through line management or whistleblowing mechanisms. However, a lack of process standardization for reporting and tracking cases escalated across the global organization was recognized in 2020

An internally dedicated Person of Trust (PoT) in each office is responsible to record and resolve any reported cases of conflict of interest within that location. Adoption for this mechanism is currently low indicating that there may be a need to involve a third-party for final assessments of conflicts of interest to ensure impartiality at all levels of management

As a part of the CFO’s office, all operations are assessed for risks related to corruption. Any significant risks identified during monthly group management meetings and quarterly partner summits (group exec board and at the same time shareholders) are addressed in a timely manner

As a part of the efforts of 2020, there were also certain blanket policy areas identified that either needed a second review or clearer direction and standardization across all locations.

There is a need for group HR to identify relevant DE&I modules for employees to cover each year globally, as a part of their capacity-building plan, in addition to the annual compliance trainings. Given regional nuances that must feed into such an activity, group HR should define office accessibility guidelines that local HR may use to evaluate needs in their respective offices

Ongoing HR review to include dedicated hours annually for employees to use towards CSR events and play their part in enhancing the community around them

Insurance and Health and Wellness benefits are localized and employees have little room to provide feedback. As a part of the global HR review conducted in 2020, these benefits are also being analysed to identify efficiencies. Any changes needed to be implemented as a result of this assessment will be planned in 2021

Market-benchmarking and an external vendor analysis is needed to check the feasibility of a third-party within Synpulse’s conflict of interest and anti-bribery reporting processes, especially at the senior management level, based on the standard that competitors of similar sizes have in place currently

Further evaluation is needed on a global mechanism that would allow each office to screen office suppliers for sustainable supply chain practices. Potential policy should limit partnerships with green suppliers, as long as their prices are competitive

As employees return to our physical office locations post-pandemic, senior management has started to conduct a deeper study of the need and cost of creating workspaces that are friendlier for the differently abled8