Downer is the leading integrated services provider in Australia and New Zealand. We employ approximately 53,000 people and generated $13.4 billion in revenue in the 2019 financial year.
Our people play a vital role in delivering the services we provide for our customers. These services affect the everyday lives of people across Australia and New Zealand, although most don’t realise how often they have touched the Downer ecosystem.
Downer is there from the moment people wake up – from the power they use to turn on a light or cook breakfast to the supply of water for their shower. When they leave the house, Downer will probably be involved in their journey. We might maintain the road they travel on. We might have built, and now maintain, the trains they ride, or run their tram system. Or we might operate the bus networks they rely on.
We are a leader in the telecommunications sector as well. Whether someone is on the phone or online, we have more than likely had a role to play – Downer is a major partner of both nbn™ in Australia and Chorus in New Zealand, providing high speed broadband, and we work for many of the major telecommunications companies.
We are also heavily involved in providing services for social infrastructure such as schools, universities, hospitals, prisons, and other areas of government such as defence.
Our customers trust us to deliver these services that will have a direct impact on their customers each day.
With our services impacting so many lives, the sustainability of our operations is paramount – for our people, our partners, our shareholders, our customers and their customers.
Sustainability is embedded in our company and integrated into Downer’s business strategy. Our commitment to sustainability is consistently recognised by leading independent ESG rating agencies, who regularly award Downer high scores for sustainability performance.
A key milestone this year was our climate-related disclosures, which fulfilled the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). A particular focus was on scenario analysis to test Downer’s portfolio, the resilience of our strategy and the assumptions associated with the relevant climate futures, both physical and transitional. Additionally, we have set an ambitious long-term greenhouse gas emission reduction target that aligns with the 2015 Paris Agreement goals to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5°C by the end of this century.
I’m also pleased to report Downer’s FY19 safety performance improved on the previous 12 months. We are constantly looking to ensure all our people go home from work safely every day. This focus extends beyond physical health to mental health as well. Many of the industries we operate in are characterised by poor mental health statistics. Over the past 12 months we have enhanced the support for our people and their families.
We look to our people to bring different and unique views to the table and therefore we continue to strengthen our focus on recruiting strategically to increase workforce participation across a range of diverse demographics. We prioritise talent retention as a key pillar of our People strategy and implement a range of initiatives to ensure our staff are motivated and rewarded. Pleasingly, our employee engagement score increased three per cent this year in our annual survey.
Downer seeks to identify the issues that have the greatest potential to impact our future success and returns to shareholders. This year we revisited our materiality assessment in line with the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Standards to identify what our stakeholders believe are the material issues for Downer. The assessment reinforced the importance our stakeholders place on governance frameworks, which is why we have increased our reporting on Downer’s governance and ethical conduct in this year’s report.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our employees, customers, communities, business partners and suppliers for your continued support. Together, we have enabled the lives of millions of people over the past 12 months, and will continue to do so in the future.
Grant Fenn
Managing Director and
Chief Executive Officer
