Letter to Our Stakeholders

Our 2015 financial performance reflects a year of significant achievements for ISS, demonstrating the value of our strategic direction and our sustainable business model. Through effective execution of our strategy and our defined value proposition, our highly engaged teams around the world improved customer experience and won many new contracts on an international, regional and local scale.In a challenging global economic environment, we improved our operating margin, generated strong organic growth and maintained our high cash conversion, enabling us to further reduce debt. Once again, the quality of our customer offering was recognised in top ratings from the International Association of Outsourcing Providers. We have entered 2016 in a strong position to take advantage of the huge potential in the estimated USD 1 trillion global market for outsourced facility services. 

Engaged teams and satisfied customers
Our 504,816 colleagues who provide an outstanding experience to our customers around the world, are at the core of our success. Each and every day, our motivated and capable colleagues deliver services, enhancing the work environments of our customers to benefit their businesses. Our teams build strong, long-term relationships with our customers. We strongly believe in the benefits of being an attractive employer. In an industry with fierce competition for talent and high staff turnover, our reputation as a responsible employer is vital to the long-term success of our company. We are proud that our employee engagement scores in 2015 were maintained at a high level of 4.4 on a scale of 1 to 5. We are delighted that 227,195 employees responded to our survey, a response rate of 72%, up from 67% in 2014. Our employee Net Promoter Score, which
shows employees’ willingness to recommend ISS as an employer, increased by 10 points to 56.4. This positively affected our customer satisfaction levels, with our Customer Net Promoter Score increasing to 36.7.

Integrated Services Expansion
One of the cornerstones of our strategy is to meet customers’ demand for the bundling of services. Our integrated facility services (IFS) offering is particularly attractive to major customers who look for a high-value, low-risk service. Our IFS offering makes it simpler and more effective for them to receive all the services they need at a uniform quality level across the board, delivered by a single provider In 2015, revenue from IFS continued to grow through new contracts and expansion of existing relationships, including UBS in the United Kingdom, Huawei in China, Danske Bank in the Nordics and Eastern Europe, the Danish State Railways (DSB) and numerous other significant partners. IFS now represents 34% of Group revenue, and we expect continued growth in demand in coming years. 

Solid performance in 2015
In 2015, we made significant progress within Corporate Responsibility. We continue to take initiatives to improve our performance in Corporate Responsibility such as increased training and awareness campaigns. As a result, we improved our Lost Time Injury Frequency by 60% and reduced the Lost Work Time by 55% over the past five years.Unfortunately, seven of our colleagues lost their lives in 2015 due to work-related accidents. This is both deeply regrettable and unacceptable. Each of these fatalities had profound impact on families, colleagues and friends and we extend our thoughts and sympathy to them. In 2015, we took new initiatives to address the challenges with vehicle related incidents such as campaigns and developing an E-Learning module on driver safety. In addition, we also developed a Toolbox Talk Calendar that aims at raising awareness and safety performance by encouraging operational teams to discuss two key topics each month. We continued with our Global ‘Drive to 100’ campaigns covering Health, Safety and Environment throughout the year to ensure we maintain our focus on these areas in our operations.

Ensuring integrity
In 2015, we received 144 Whistleblower reports. As in previous years, the majority of the reports concern local human resource issues. Of the reports in scope, 14 cases were escalated to the ISS Group’s Business Integrity Committee in 2015 for further investigation. We would like to see more reports coming in from our employees and stakeholders, as a way of ensuring the integrity of our business behaviour. In 2015, we investigated the establishment of more options for reporting via telephone and app-technology to widen the choices. We will implement new initiatives in 2016.

Continued commitment to UN Global Compact
On human rights, labour rights, environmental protection and anti-corruption, we have made a strong commitment as a signatory and supporter of the United Nations Global Compact since its inception in 1999. We remain committed to aligning our strategy and operations with the ten Global Compact principles. Furthermore, we respect, support and promote human rights and support the ambitions stated in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Core Conventions of the International Labour organisation. In 2015, we carried out an assessment of our level of compliance with the United Nations’ Guiding Principles for Business and Human Rights (UNGPs). You can read more about the assessment in this Report. In recent years, we have also strengthened our control environment and governance including our supply chain. Looking ahead, we will strive to further improve our performance within Corporate Responsibility with particular attention to eliminating fatalities at our work places and aligning with the UNGPs.

Yours faithfully

Lord Allen                                                 Jeff Gravenhorst
of Kensington CBE                                    Group Chief Executive Officer
Chairman