Corporate Social Responsibility supporting our local community
As part of our plan to meet our objective to be a world class organisation, we are committed to improving our performance in relation to corporate social responsibility including a continued focus on environmental sustainability.
This is currently addressed in three ways:
- The work we undertake to ensure that as an organisation we meet our obligations under the Scottish Government's Zero Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012 in relation to segregation of all recyclable waste materials.
- The programme of initiatives we put in place to facilitate positive engagement in the community by our own colleagues.
- The support of a charity on a yearly basis.
Our current charity partner for 2023/24 is Ronald McDonald House, Glasgow. Our previous charity for 2021-23 was Scottish Autism.
Employee volunteer days
Every colleague is entitled to take one day a year (or two half days), which they can dedicate to corporate social responsibility (CSR) activity. We encourage people to get out and about to make a social impact and fundraise. This can take the form of an activity for our charity, or colleagues who may already undertake some volunteer or charity work in their own time may use their volunteer day working with that organisation. Some of our colleagues who sit on external charitable Boards use their allocated CSR time for this.
Over the last few years, our colleagues have undertaken numerous charitable days, we've done hit squads with Freshstart, we've built bottle greenhouses, we've revamped the gardens of a number of care homes and we've helped rebuild the chicken runs and build new fences at Gorgie City Farm. For Scottish Autism we collected £3,606 through a wide range of fundraising activities from colleagues, including running marathons, abseiling from the Forth Bridge, bake sales, quiz nights, a table tennis tournament, and a number of online initiatives. A number of colleagues have helped elderly neighbors with fence painting or gardening and some have helped with their local school after school activities. In 2018-19, we started a paired reading programme with a local primary school.
Our upcoming CSR day is 20 June, in Glasgow at Ronald McDonald House Glasgow’s base next to Queen Elizabeth University Hospital. The main tasks will include painting, gardening, cleaning, and to support the day-to-day working of the house in any way we can. We also have a group of colleagues doing the Kilt Walk in September.
