Social responsibility
We are in the business of managing brand and corporate reputation on behalf of clients and the Board acknowledges that being socially responsible is an important factor in the management of our business.
The Board confirms that regular consideration is given to the significance of social, environmental and ethical (SEE) issues (as defined by the Association of British Insurers), and as part of our wider operational risk framework, identifies significant risks arising from these areas to short-term and long-term value.
The Group also considers corporate responsibility to be an area of business opportunity. Our subsidiary, Corporate Citizenship, provides not only a focus for our investment in this field but provides the Group with specialist expertise.
The Board believes that corporate responsibility should underpin everything that we do. The Group is therefore committed to demonstrating the importance of this, not only in our work for clients but in our own working practices.
The Company measures the performance of each of its businesses against a benchmark of minimum corporate responsibility standards. The standards are designed to be stretching and, as such, encourage continual improvement in this important area.
We continue to report our corporate responsibility performance to our stakeholders via our website and printed media. These detail not only the principles of our approach but also give examples of the initiatives undertaken.
The Company is listed on the FTSE4Good Index, which evaluates companies performance on a number of corporate responsibility criteria.
Environment
The business of Chime Communications is primarily in the UK and delivers services to clients based on image, ideas, research and content. As such, our direct and indirect impact on the environment is minimal and considered low-risk.
However, we acknowledge that our customers, staff and other stakeholders have an interest in our impact on the environment and as such we have committed to monitor and improve our environmental performance where possible. We became Carbon Neutral at the start of 2007. In the first year we reduced our emissions by 37%, winning an award from Business in the Community in the process. In 2008, our aim was to achieve further reductions (our target was 5%) and embed the new behaviour and data collection processes into our working practices. Our emissions will be audited against our target in March by the Carbon Neutral Company and the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon Management and we are confident of meeting our target. Our companies regularly incorporate our environmental performance in business presentations as we believe this is an important consideration when evaluating reputation.
We continue to work with our customers and our supply chain in order to ensure that our impact is minimised and that best practice is achieved.
