Aim
As a company, we aim to be a responsible member of our industry and our community in all our operations and activities.
Principles
- We recognise that no business operates in isolation and the decisions a business makes, and the way it acts, have a profound impact on its employees, its customers, its suppliers, the communities it works in and the wider environment.
- Responsibility is not a short-term fix or publicity stunt: it is a principled approach to doing business that needs to be part of an overall culture. A CSR policy, therefore, can only ever tell part of the story.
- CSR is everyone’s responsibility within a company.
- We believe that responsible businesses are more effective businesses.
Policies and practices
Our responsibility as a business covers many different areas. Currently we have specific actions covering our responsibilities to the environment, to our communities, to our staff and to our suppliers.
Responsibility to the environment
Bell has developed a full environment and sustainable development policy and is currently working towards ISO14001 through specialist standards agency QMS. Our interim number is GB 16584 and we plan to achieve this standard by mid February 2009.
Key strands of our environment policy cover:
- reducing waste and recycling wherever possible
- cutting our energy consumption both in the office and in terms of travel
- working with environmentally responsible suppliers.
Our full policy is available on request.
Responsibility to our community
As a company with diverse interests, our staff already support many community projects on an individual basis. We believe therefore that as a business, the most effective way of engaging with our local communities is as a design company. We have recently introduced a scheme through which our staff – designers, digital personnel, strategists and project managers – will visit schools across the London area to talk about careers in design, and specifically the roles they each fulfil. We provide a short presentation showing what we do as a company, and then hand over to individual members of staff to speak and answer questions.
The scheme is targeted at 6th forms (year 12 and 13). Each member of staff is entitled to half a day’s leave per visit.
At the moment, the scheme is being promoted by word of mouth, particularly through schools with which we already have contact. We will shortly add a notice on our website inviting teachers to request a visit.
As well as providing young people with a tangible first-hand experience of what it is like to work in the design industry, we believe this will benefit us in our wider work – much of which is targeted at schools, young people and the education sector – as it will help us to retain a current understanding of the school environment.
Responsibility within our industry
We are committed to helping develop our industry, both in terms of meeting future skills needs and ensuring it operates ethically and responsibly. We are active members of many design industry associations, and our creative director Ian Allison is currently part of the Design Council panel that is advising on future qualifications for the design sector.
Responsibility as an employer
We recognise that one of our key responsibilities as a business is to the staff we employ – to ensure they are motivated, fairly treated and fairly rewarded. Over recent years, we have introduced a range of programmes that offer different benefits to staff, over and above legal requirements, that reflect different interests. These include:
- subsidised gym membership at a local health club
- a cycle to work scheme, which helps staff purchase bicycles and safety equipment and which also provides secure bike storage while at work
- a new programme granting an extra day’s holiday for staff to spend in activities which they are passionate about. These are as necessarily as diverse as our workforce. The one obligation on each employee taking up this opportunity is that they give a presentation to their colleagues on the activity they have chosen.
Responsibility to suppliers
We aim to work with suppliers that share our views and values – in particular, regarding the environment. We have made environmental issues a key part of supplier section, particularly for print and business services.
We seek to work with suppliers in a responsible way, offering fair payment terms and conditions.
Where possible and appropriate, we will use local businesses as suppliers to help invest in our community.
Responsibility in a global economy
In a global economy, the communities we influence – and depend on – are not just local. Instead, they are literally all over the world. An integral part of our approach as a responsible company therefore is a global one: supporting design and designers in emerging economies.
We have participated in a UK delegation to China, where we gave presentations about design, branding and our company to invited audiences. We are now looking to build on this and have begun the process, with the support of UK Trade and Investment, of setting up links with business and universities in China that aim to offer opportunities for Chinese students to gain work experience with us.
Future actions
- We will work to gain ISO14001 accreditation for our environmental policy by mid-February 2009.
- We will roll out further our programme of school visits, with the aim of conducting ten such visits in 2009.
- We will introduce, by 2011, a programme offering work experience within our London offices, to Chinese students.
Measuring the impact
Our actions, above, set out some key measures for our CSR policy.