Gains in gender diversity were hailed one of the successes in MCI’s recently released 2011 Sustainability Report, which showed that the number of its female staff in senior management positions has risen from 27 to 38, an increase of 10 per cent.

Guy Bigwood, MCI’s group sustainability director, said: “Sustainability is at MCI is about people, planet and profit. Gender diversity in management is especially important and makes for better decision making and long-term growth.”

Results also showed 85 per cent of MCI’s offices now having a detailed sustainability plan for 2012, while funds raised for sustainability programmes grew from £59,847 to £168,499, up 280 per cent. The amount of CO2 emissions was reduced from 4.09 tons to 3.61 tons. In addition, of its 47 international offices, 35 now had a CSR (corporate social responsibility) programme, a 19 per cent increase.

Sebastien Tondeur, CEO of MCI, added: “Seventy-four per cent of our talent (staff) have changed their work habits due to our CSR programme, 85 per cent of our offices reported on environmental and social impact and our teams have participated in 52 community programmes. We also produced last year 20 reports on sustainability for our customers.”

However, the results showed that the company still needs to work hard to persuade its top suppliers to fully add sustainability clauses to their MCI contracts. Bigwood said: "Our top 10 suppliers globally have signed the United Nations code of conduct, as have 67 of our global key suppliers that represent 45 per cent of our total spend. Global procurement will continue to outreach to global partners to increase their sustainability performance, which over time will mean more mandatory and audited sustainability performance. A second part of the strategy is that global procurement will be working with all the procurement managers in our local offices. Each manager has a goal for their office to get their top 10 suppliers signed up this year."

Pictured: Guy Bigwood, MCI