Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2014

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Recent highlights: • We have taken part in four consecutive ‘Give & Gain Days’, and we were one of the national sponsors of the event in both 2013 and 2014. • We have created a menu of one-day activities that colleagues can select from if they need inspiration for how to spend their volunteering entitlement. • We have hosted a summer work experience placement for the past four years. • We have implemented a system of Payroll Giving with assistance from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF). • We have created a menu of charity gifts that we send to placed candidates immediately following their appointment, so that they can choose a cause for us to support in their name. Future commitments: • We will become champions for skillsbased employee volunteering, showing through our actions how businesses can deliver meaningful benefit to community groups by undertaking activities that play to their core competencies. • We will continue to be prominent and vocal supporters of Give & Gain Day, expanding our own involvement through seeking the participation of clients and candidates. • We will continue hosting summer work experience placements, but adapt our scheme so that we can link it into Business in the Community’s Ready to Work programme. • We will increase the number of colleagues taking advantage of payroll giving. • We will encourage charitable fundraising efforts amongst colleagues and, where appropriate, commit the business to match-fund what colleagues have raised. • We will provide added support and flexibility for colleagues looking to take on charity Trustee or school Governor commitments. Community The central focus of Society’s community activities has always been employee volunteering. We consider employee volunteering to be a great way of delivering benefit to our community, whilst also strengthening our business. Colleagues find our team volunteering days to be an energising and morale-boosting experience, and we have found that these events have the added benefits of improving teamwork and stimulating better cross-company communication. Since Society was first set up, we have guaranteed every colleague three fully-paid volunteering days per year. For the past four years we have also been enthusiastic participants in Give & Gain Day. We were one of the national sponsors for the event in 2013, and we decided to support it again in 2014. Increasingly we are trying to steer our employee volunteering choices towards skills-based activities like providing advice on CV writing and delivering mock interview workshops. Although we will continue to do physical activities like gardening and painting upon occasion, we feel that skills-based activities offer us the opportunity to make a more profound and measurable impact on people’s lives by utilising our unique experience as headhunters in a meaningful way. We are also trying to give a clearer focus to our other community ventures, including our summer work experience scheme. This year we will be linking up with Business in the Community’s ‘Ready for Work’ programme in order to offer our placement to someone who has been recently homeless and is now looking to get back into employment.
Workplace As previously mentioned, 2013 saw a significant increase in Society’s headcount. Initiatives under the general theme of ‘Workforce’ have therefore been a big focus for us over recent months. In particular there are three areas in which we feel we have made progress: 1. We have dramatically increased the time and resources that we allocate to training and development, including buying in outside support and sending colleagues on external courses. At the same time we have also devolved responsibility in many areas, and promoted a number of colleagues into team management positions. We hope that these changes will help us get the best out of both our new and existing colleagues. 2. We have expanded the range of benefits that we provide to employees to include a full Group Personal Pension Plan and Death in Service cover of up to 4x salary. We have also begun offering Childcare Vouchers to colleagues who are parents, and Season Ticket Loans to colleagues who have been with the company for more than three years. 3. We have done a lot of work on defining the sort of culture that we want the business to possess. This has led to the creation of our ‘Steering Wheel’ – a tool that we hope will allow us to stay true to our founding values and behaviours as we continue to grow and diversify. Having taken these steps, we will next look to quantify their effect by conducting a thorough Staff Survey later in 2014. Recent highlights: • We have created a company ‘Steering Wheel’ in order to provide new colleagues with a clear statement of the values and behaviours we all need to abide by. • We have reviewed our policies on issues such as equality and diversity, harassment and bullying, health and safety, alcohol and drug misuse, and whistle-blowing. • We have implemented a transparent progression structure, giving colleagues greater clarity about development routes, training opportunities, and salary scales. • We have made efforts to encourage healthy eating through making free fresh fruit available to colleagues in the office. • We have implemented a flexible hours policy, giving colleagues increased control over their working day. • We have created an online portal called ‘Delphi’ to provide the spine of our ongoing training and development activities. • We have chosen an office with excellent accessibility for wheelchair users. • We have created an employee benefits scheme consisting of pension contributions and life assurance for all colleagues, along with Childcare Vouchers for colleagues with children, and season ticket loans for colleagues with over three years’ service. • We have marginally improved the firm’s maternity/paternity leave policies and introduced the possibility of sabbatical breaks after five years’ service. Future commitments: • We will continue to take steps to increase the diversity of our workforce, with a particular focus on reaching out to potential colleagues who might be over-30, female, and/or of BME extraction. • We will take steps to encourage colleagues to invest more in their pensions.
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Corporate Social Responsibility Report 2014

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