CEO Message
A Message from Our Chair of the Board of Directors and CEO, Matthijs Glastra
Novanta’s mission is to deliver innovations that matter. As a global organization with a wide-reaching customer and supplier base, our products touch lives up and down our value chain. We believe that being a responsible organization benefits all of our stakeholders—our customers, suppliers, business partners, employees, shareholders, and the communities of which we are a part. ESG is important to us because we have the opportunity, and the responsibility, to not only deliver mission critical innovations but to do so in a way that positively impacts people, communities, and the planet.
Our ESG program, therefore, must balance several priorities concurrently: being the trusted technology partner to our customers, developing and deploying safe medical and advanced industrial technologies while limiting the harm to the planet, and uplifting the wellbeing of our employees and neighbors. We believe this balancing act starts from the inside out. This is what our Novanta Way culture stands for—a high performing culture consisting of employees who feel empowered to contribute to cohesive teams that are engaged and aligned around our vision and strategy, and who live our values and drive performance, utilizing a common set of tools and techniques. It is who we are, and what we expect from our leaders and our employees. In 2022, we saw the results of this approach in revenue growth, new product development, customer and employee satisfaction, and community engagement.
We began integrating ESG into our operations several years ago, but this started to get real traction in 2022. Across our organization, we have committed to making ESG a priority—a Novanta with a unified culture and spirit, regardless of geography or business unit.
Our focus on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) was central to developing this commitment. An inclusive and attractive workplace, with a diverse and engaged workforce and equitable growth opportunities, is essential in driving sustainable performance and innovation. Launched in 2021, our DEI efforts made significant strides in 2022 with diverse interview slates, enhanced Employee Resource Groups, new company-wide voluntary training on inclusive leadership and unconscious bias, and deeper engagement with our local communities. This was spearheaded by our DEI Committee and our Culture Councils, both of which I met with regularly to review progress towards our DEI objectives.
Our environmental sustainability work also matured further this year. We are making progress toward our goal of sourcing renewable energy to cover 90% of our electricity consumption. We also officially launched NovantaSUSTAIN, our program to embed environmental criteria into product development at the design stage. I’m particularly proud of the initiative our research and development leaders took to develop and disseminate our New Product Innovation (NPI) Toolbox. The NPI toolbox provides product development teams with templates and checklists to ensure environmental aspects are considered throughout the product design and development phases before new products are launched. On the supply chain side, we achieved our foundational goal of gathering information on and evaluating the environmental practices of our key suppliers.
These achievements couldn’t happen without our dedicated teams. I’m continually impressed by the dedication and initiative shown by our teams across the world who have rolled up their sleeves, not just to do the work they were hired to do but to truly live the Novanta values and go above and beyond. In 2022. Novanta employees thought of new ways to reduce waste and natural resource use at work, got out and volunteered in their local communities, and confronted their own unconscious bias. We work every day to make sure employees feel engaged and welcome but it’s truly special when I see our employees do this for each other as well.
I’m so proud of all we have accomplished this year. Here are a few additional highlights worth noting:
We improved our methods for calculating our carbon footprint and expanded the scope and boundaries of our data collection to include all sites, regardless of size.
Our GHG inventory was successfully verified by a professional firm for the first time.
We completed 314 community service days, surpassing our goal of 250 days for the year.
We launched a new Employee Resource Group (ERG), the Novanta Professionals Network, and grew the membership in our two other existing ERGs.
We rolled out voluntary unconscious bias training to over 1,400 employees across Novanta.
We launched internal websites on DEI for employees in addition to our external ESG microsite
We continue to make progress on achieving ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certifications for all relevant facilities.
We are excited to share these results with our stakeholders in this report and its supplementary appendices. We acknowledge the impact of our carbon footprint and the role we play in facilitating meaningful change to benefit the people and the places affected by our operations. As we mature on our ESG journey, we look forward to setting and meeting increasingly ambitious targets and sharing our progress with you. We hope you’ll join us for the journey.
Chair of the Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer