Responsibility at SYK

Our responsibility vision

Our goal is for our campuses to be the most responsible campuses in Europe by 2030. For us, the three areas of responsibility mean the following:

1) Ecological sustainability
As active members of our community, we participate in the global effort to mitigate climate change and support biodiversity. We utilise renewable and smart energy solutions as we move towards energy-positive and carbon-neutral campuses. We are aware of our own ecological footprint and we develop the ecological sustainability of our campuses in cooperation with others.

2) Financial sustainability
By being frugal with capital, we are also frugal with natural resources. Being diligent in capital allocation allows us to ensure the responsible effectiveness of our operations. By applying the principles of the sharing economy and smart resource utilisation in our operations, we also create the conditions for new entrants. We contribute to economic stability by developing our campuses into attractive places. Our strong financial position also enables us to be ecologically and socially responsible. Part of our funding is Green Bond funding.

3) Social sustainability
Everyone is entitled to learn and access information. As a developer of learning and research environments, we contribute to the creation of a sustainable society. As open and constantly changing operating environments, the campuses facilitate internationalisation. We work with universities to create safe, healthy and ideal conditions for lifelong learning. We also recognise our own role as a custodian of cultural heritage. We play a part in facilitating research and education, which in turn promotes regional vitality and well-being.

We develop campuses in accordance with the principles of sustainable development

As a property owner, our responsibility especially includes developing and maintaining the properties in line with the principles of sustainable development. We are responsible for providing our customers with appropriate and healthy premises. We work to ensure that our properties are sustainable from the perspective of people, the environment and the economy.

We want to develop our campuses into environments where everyone, regardless of their role or perspective, can find it motivating and meaningful to act responsibly. We want our campuses to have a positive impact that supports responsible lifestyles.

Only buildings that are used can generate added value for society, which makes them worth the investments made in their construction and maintenance. Accordingly, the attractiveness of our campuses is also significant from the perspective of responsibility. We want our campuses to be highly integrated parts of vibrant university cities.

Making more efficient use of space is responsible from the perspective of the economy as well as the environment. At the same time, we recognise that learning is a social situation. We often convert underutilised premises into group workspaces to support collaborative learning.

Extensive partnership network supporting operations

We are a small expert organisation whose operations are based on reliable partnerships. Our partner network consists of hundreds of partners, the most significant of which are universities, construction companies, property maintenance companies, consulting companies, funding providers, property leasing operators and other expert organisations. We aim to build long-term developing relationships with our partners.

As the client, we require our partners to operate responsibly. Economic responsibility and environmental responsibility are emphasised in our assessment of partners. In practice, this is a question of matters concerning taxes and the environmental impacts of operations, for example.

We develop our industry by making substantial investments in research, development and innovation activities that help take the property and construction industry forward. We also promote a culture of experimentation by allocating funds from our annual renovation budgets to demo projects implemented in partnership with universities each year.

Responsibility reporting in accordance with the standards

We have enhanced our operations compliant with the principles of sustainable development since 2011 – in practice, throughout our company’s existence. We report in accordance with the GRI principles and publish an integrated annual report and responsibility report on our website and in the GRI database every year.

We report in accordance with the GRI Standards, and no significant changes have taken place in the calculation limits from the previous years. Unless otherwise noted, the figures reported by in our responsibility report are for the parent company University Properties of Finland Ltd. For accidents at work, we also report figures for subcontractors and external partners to the extent that they are related to SYK’s construction sites or campuses. Our financial report also includes consolidated figures. These parts of the Group are the parent company University Properties of Finland Ltd and three real estate companies: Kiinteistö Oy Arctic Centre, Kiinteistö Oy Kuopion Studentia and Kiinteistö Oy Bioteknia. These real estate companies are partly owned subsidiaries of SYK. We influence the corporate responsibility of these companies with the work of the Board of Directors.

The aim of our reporting is to promote the openness and transparency of our operations, provide increased opportunities for comparisons within the industry and improve the monitoring of key aspects. A further goal is to identify aspects of our operations that our stakeholders have a special interest in, through which we can strengthen our positive impacts on the surrounding society, economy and environment.

We also participate in the discussion on responsibility in our industry together with our stakeholders and we are interested in new reporting models. We are a member of the FIBS corporate responsibility network, and utilise the lessons and ideas that originate from it.

Our key themes of responsibility