2016 sustainability performance update

In 2015 we set out our ‘5 in 5’ sustainability goals - five big commitments for us to achieve before 2020. Today, as we publish our 2016 performance, I wanted to share some of our highlights and challenges from last year.

We made good progress in the second year of our five year plan. Some of our highlights include:

• Reducing our carbon footprint by 7.5% despite growing our business (that’s in addition to a 6.1% reduction in 2015). This was achieved through further truck roll reduction and energy efficiency projects.
• Developing a methodology, approved by external experts, to understand the environmental and social benefits of our products going forward as we work to improve each product’s sustainability impacts.
• Giving thousands of Voom Pioneers, our online community of entrepreneurs and small business owners, the opportunity to grow their business through bespoke events such as workshops on pitching, harnessing social media and accessing funding.
• Working with Scope to support 705 disabled people and their families through providing access to assistive technology – bringing the total number of disabled people and their families supported by our partnership’s Inspire Independence programme up to 921.

While we made good progress across all five goals, there were some areas where we didn’t achieve everything we wanted. For example, the gender balance in our senior leadership population (A-C grade) remained static at 32% because we didn’t recruit more females into new roles, although we did decrease attrition and increase the promotion of females in senior positions. In addition, we didn’t register as many new Voom Pioneers to the new online community as planned due to the merger of Pioneers and Voom programmes being delayed to April 2017.

Discover our 2016 performance in more detail

Every year we look for new, exciting digital ways to tell our performance story and this year is no different.


Following on from our 360 sustainability report last year, our objective this year is to reach even more employees and customers with our performance update – that’s why we’ve embraced a social media inspired way to tell our sustainability story. This approach has seen us ditch the traditional, dull report again, and embrace the latest digital storytelling techniques. We think sustainability is a story worth sharing, and we want it to reach more people than ever before by putting our people at the heart of it.


With Virgin Media’s social media accounts having hundreds of thousands of followers, plus the sharing power of our people, we’re taking our performance content to our audience in an exciting and engaging way.

We’re now half way through our five goals. To ensure we are on track we’ve set ourselves clear and measurable rolling targets. Find out what we’ll be focused on for the remainder of the goals.


Looking back on the first half of 2017 we’re pleased with the progress we’re making. Two of my personal highlights include setting smarter rolling sub-targets for our goals roadmap, which helps us to stay focused on delivering the goods by the end of 2020 and bringing together two of Virgin Media’s key partnerships, Scope and Southampton FC, to show disability discrimination in football the red card.


There's no question we've set the bar high, but we like to be ambitious at Virgin Media. With continued focus on these goals from every part of Virgin Media I have no doubt that we have the ambition and dedication to do what we've set out to achieve by 2020 – so stay tuned for the final three years.