Environmental, social, and governance
Sustainability in healthcare at Calvary
Calvary Health Care is committed to delivering and growing sustainable healthcare by integrating ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles into our strategy and aligning with our mission of 'Being for others', our values, and our unique offering of connected care across hospitals, aged care, retirement living and home care.
Calvary’s values of Hospitality, Healing, Stewardship, and Respect guide our ability to embed ESG into our operations.
Calvary is committed to:
- Embedding ESG principles into the care we deliver to enhance the patient experience.
- Developing ESG-focused training and development programs that empower our people to adopt sustainable practices in their daily work.
- Aligning our growth strategies with ESG principles to ensure sustainable and ethical expansion.
- Driving systemic change with sustainable innovation and thought leadership in the healthcare sector.
Environmental
At Calvary we care for our resources, our communities and our environment. We are committed to creating a sustainable global future through environmental stewardship and aim to reduce our carbon footprint across our scope 1 and scope 2 emissions by at least 43% by 2030, based on FY2023 levels, to contribute to a healthier planet.
Our focus is on reducing:
- FY25 emission reduction efforts focussing on electricity, gas and waste
- Working with stakeholders to positively influence our supply chain emissions.
Calvary’s clean energy commitment continues to reduce carbon emissions
Launched in 2021, Calvary's solar program initiative has generated more than 4.5 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of renewable energy across 18 sites in the last two years alone, significantly reducing Calvary’s reliance on traditional energy sources.
The program even managed to increase its renewable energy generation from 2,020,986 kWh across 19 sites in 2023 to 2,470,369 kWh across 18 sites in 2024.
Keep Me in the Loop® program at Calvary’s Tasmanian hospitals
The first trial of the Keep Me in the Loop® program began at Calvary’s two Hobart hospitals in May, where an impressive 3,700 kilograms of the clean, single-use material has already been saved from landfill.
It has now come full circle with collections now underway at Calvary’s Launceston hospitals, expanding to include harder unsoiled plastics such as bowls and bottles.
Social
Calvary has almost 18,000 compassionate and dedicated staff and volunteers who aim to make a difference in the communities we serve. We must continually consider and review how our operations as a healthcare provider impacts people directly and indirectly to ensure we adopt socially sustainable practices.
Calvary supports Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) as part of our broader commitment to ESG, underpinned by the Spirit of Calvary.
Our objectives are:
- To create a welcoming inclusive organisation that embraces diversity and reflects the values and Spirit of Calvary
- To promote an inclusive, respectful, culturally competent workforce, addressing any barriers to access and equity
- To attract, recruit and retain a diverse workforce with equity, respect and equitable access to fair opportunities
- To welcome and value people from diverse backgrounds
- To establish governance to review practice, benchmark progress, and ensure service delivery and environments meet the diverse needs of all who work or are cared for by Calvary.
Calvary’s DE&I Plan 2024 distils these into one single objective: that everyone who will join us in our mission, and Share the Spirit of Calvary through Great Connected Care, is welcome at Calvary regardless of their background, beliefs or identity.
Calvary is committed to providing respectful, culturally safe services to the people we serve, welcoming environments and a genuinely inclusive workforce where people are supported to draw strengths from their identity, culture and community.
Reconciliation at Calvary
Calvary acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and Owners of the lands on which all our services operate. We recognise that these Custodians have walked upon and cared for these lands for thousands of years. We acknowledge the continued deep spiritual attachment and relationship of First Nations peoples to this country and commit ourselves to the ongoing journey of Reconciliation.
Pacific Australia Labour Mobility Scheme
Calvary continues to adopt sustainable practices to attract and retain new members of our workforce amid the ongoing shortages of healthcare workers internationally.
Under the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) Scheme, a Commonwealth Government initiative supporting the economic development of nine Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste, workers have joined Calvary where there is an unmet demand for labour.
Modern Slavery Act
Calvary is a member of the Australian Catholic Anti-Slavery Network (ACAN) and committed to the eradication of modern slavery, human trafficking, and forced labour.
Learn more about how we are actively addressing risks in our hiring practices, and supply chains of our business.
Calvary Group Gender Pay Gap Employer Statement
Calvary strives to provide equal opportunities and a safe workplace for individuals of all genders, cultural backgrounds, ages and skill levels.
As an organisation, we are encouraged by our overall gender pay gap results published by the Workplace Gender Equality Agency.
The data shows an improvement from last year, and Calvary is committed to furthering these achievements in some outliers across the group where there are opportunities.
Governance
Calvary is committed to being transparent about its sustainable decision-making, enabling innovative responses to changing environmental and societal challenges. A focus on continual improvement, through reporting and reviewing the long-term impacts of our practices, will ensure Calvary remains an organisation that our partners across the health sector and other industries want to work with well into the future domestically and internationally.
Cyber security
Cyber security and data privacy are increasingly important due to the digitisation of health information and the increasing sophistication of cyber activity.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, these threats increased significantly in line with a global rise in cyber-attacks, with much of the malicious activity focused on phishing attacks in an attempt to convince people to click on suspicious emails and attachments.
Our information and cyber security policy and practices are risk-based and focus on protecting the confidentiality, integrity, and the availability of our critical assets (people, systems, and processes).
Awareness training is seen as a critical element of our strategy, with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) reporting that at least 67% of breaches in Australia are caused by human error. Training has been tailored to be engaging and relevant to staff roles and will become a regular part of our education programs allowing knowledge, sentiment and engagement to be tracked.
Actions taken to strengthen cyber security include:
- Staff training on information and cyber security risks
- Prompt patching of internet-facing software, operating systems and devices
- Use of multi-factor authentication across remote access services
- A comprehensive risk response available for significant cyber breaches
- Critical infrastructure managed through a multinational ICT organisation with Defence strength capability
An ESG Calvary case study
Calvary must continually adapt and change to meet the care needs of our communities and contemporise the environments in which we provide our care, and enhance our service delivery with access to pathways that generate connected care services.
Calvary is delivering on its strategy to consolidate in existing sites and undertake refurbishment projects that ultimately grows the Calvary Care System: a unique connected care offering.
To achieve this, Calvary assessed our residential aged care homes to ensure they could meet the future needs of the community, or were aligned to functionally support specialist interests. This led to the closure of three homes.
In undertaking these closures, Calvary adopted principles enabling positive sustainable outcomes.
Environment
Our asset relocations increased over the course of the three Victorian home closures from 54%, to 64% to 83%; leading to an incremental decrease in landfill waste.
Assets were efficiently repurposed or relocated, rather than discarded, optimising resource utilisation and reducing the environmental impact of the business decision. More than 3,500 items were relocated and about 100 items donated.
In decommissioning the three properties, we also identified efficiencies of hazardous and chemical waste management that can have long-term benefits across the organisation.
Social
Our primary focus across the closures was continual and safe care for our residents, as well as ensuring care of our staff.
We relocated 85% of our residents to other Calvary homes. And redeployed 87% of our staff.
Governance
To ensure successful and sustainable outcomes a program governance structure was put in place. This included a cross-functional team that applied agile and traditional program management to ensure timely decisions, open communication, minimised delays and high-quality outcomes.