Corporate Social Responsibility at Badenoch & Clark

Badenoch & Clark created its CSR team back in 2003. The drivers for creating a team were twofold; firstly the commercial advantages that it brings in aligning us with the businesses that we interact with, and secondly, to satisfy the demands of our staff who required the business to be more socially aware and proactive.

The CSR team consists of 8 committee members and 13 CSR champions and is made up of consultants, managers and senior managers from around the business. Each member of the team has volunteered and devotes a little time and energy to making the CSR projects successful. It is testament to the enthusiasm of employees at Badenoch & Clark that each part of the business is represented as well as all of our 15 offices across the UK.

The CSR team is of course only the face of Badenoch & Clark’s CSR projects. The team would be powerless without the support and energy of everyone at Badenoch & Clark in the contribution of their energy, support and finances for the projects and initiatives that the team organizes.

Our CSR focus is split into three areas: People, Charities and Environment.

People:

Our goals are to increase employee engagement using our varied volunteering projects and to work in partnership with organisations to improve the community in which we live.

 Charities:

We donate to charities close to our employees’ hearts both locally and nationwide usually through fun activities and sponsorship.

 Environment:

We actively promote a reduce – reuse – recycle ethos and aim for a large scale reduction in our carbon footprint and in the amount of waste that goes to landfill.

We aim to be recognised as being a leader in our field for our corporate social responsibility programme.

“One day to make a difference”

In order to support our CSR initiatives, we encourage staff to take one day out of the office per year to “make a difference” This “one day to make a difference” can be used by attending the many community based initiatives we have throughout the year covering our three focus areas.

Recent achievements:

The team has achieved a lot throughout the last year. Some of these initiatives are ongoing and others were new for 2008:

• Developed regional partnerships with Manchester Settlement, Burley Lodge Centre in Leeds and St Basils in Birmingham to provide CV writing and career coaching surgeries.
• Sponsorship of the Employment Café in Brixton providing mentoring, CV and interview support for job seekers.
• Transformed part of our London Head office into a fun zone for both Comic Relief and Sport Relief charities raising over £2000 each year
• Sponsorship of Green Routes at Finsbury Park and helping with ground clearing and planting in a communal garden.
• Planting 131 trees in woodlands to offset our carbon usage on paper production through our very own ‘Treebate’ initiative.
• Using 100% recycled office papers with our promotional print being 50% recycled and 50% from FSC sources.
• Continuing our support for the dragon boat racing raising funds for Habitat for Humanity
• We have increased the amount of waste we recycle by over 300% throughout the year.

Mentoring at Badenoch & Clark

We haven’t done what we’ve done without support and guidance.
We have forged a successful relationship with Heart of the City (www.theheartofthecity.com ) This free service offers tons of advice and guidance on all things CSR. They found us a terrific mentor in the shape of HSBC who spent time with us on developing our CSR approach and strategies. HSBC gave us ideas to help raise our profile in the company and they continue to offer help and advice when required. Following a busy and successful period for our CSR team we have now been asked to mentor another local company, Oriel Securities. We initially met with Oriel to discuss what they wanted to achieve for CSR and share ideas on how to gain interest and momentum. We continue to actively share ideas in developing their own CSR team and goals, each gaining from the experience and ideas generated by both businesses. It’s all good, and it’s all FREE.

Quick tips and hints to make a difference

Many of the things we do here are quick and easy to introduce, and cost nothing. Here is a sample of quick wins you too might be able to influence your company in carrying out at very little or no cost:

• Weekly flower raffle – every Friday, we raffle off the week’s flower display from our reception to staff. This helps us support our chosen charities by an additional £300+ per annum – at no cost to the company!
• Toner recycling – Get your suppliers to collect empty and obsolete toner cartridges for recycling. Saves resources, energy and carbon emissions with donations made to several charities on our behalf every year.
• Where we can’t get our drinking water mains fed, our bottled water supplier donates 40p per bottle to Christian Aid helping bring much needed water supplies to the third world. Get your suppliers involved and be surprised at some of the possibilities!
• “Bog press” – We use the backs of toilet doors in cubicles to promote and communicate CSR issues and initiatives – it’s a captive audience which gets lots of great feedback by staff, visitors and customers.
• We donate excess office furniture and equipment no longer needed to local charities, schools and small businesses helping us promote our reduce, reuse, recycle ethos.
• Through our eye-catching quarterly posters in our kitchen areas we draw attention to energy usage, recycling schemes, carbon reduction ideas and other environmental messages, so whilst getting your drinks you can learn how to save our planet.
• We positively discriminate towards recycled and recyclable products; these no longer have to cost more. Get your stationery buyer to talk to your office supplier now.
• We have banished all individual bins from desks in our head office and encourage staff to get some exercise and use the various recycling and rubbish bins located around the floors.

Feedback from you

If you feel passionate about what you can do or are doing, or would like to know more about our CSR activities, we would love to hear from you.