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media4change Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy
Social
Employees
media4change wants to provide a positive workplace to encourage people to reach their full potential and, after all, we spend a lot of time at work so it may as well be a nice place to be. Some of the things we do are:
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We try to develop and invest in our employees in a number of ways, from the simple things like encouraging and supporting people to have a go at a task they haven’t done before to enabling them to further their academic careers.
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We try to create a relaxed working area with music playing and a comfy, relaxing breakout area complete with sofas and a fishtank, not to mention a couple of bottles of wine and nibbles on a Friday afternoon. To cap it all off our office is situated near a park and lots of green open space with lots of paths ideal for taking meetings outdoors and walking while you talk.
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Flexible working hours make sense, banks close at 17.00, you have to wait millennia for a doctor’s appointment outside standard working hours, some people are morning people, some aren’t; so that’s what we do.
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We empower our employees in all kinds of ways, like letting them choose their own job titles.
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Our health and safety standards aren’t great at the moment but we are working on it, to help we have nominated a health and safety manager who is working to ensure our working environment is safe and compliant.
Community Investment
We are a Community Interest Company so are involved in all kinds of projects. We don’t just work with companies, but NGO’s, charities and communities too. We get involved in local projects, like the Macclesfield Football Club charity and with communities and projects overseas in Honduras, and Congo for example.
Supply Chain
We really try to think about where the things we buy come from and the impact we have on the environment, we must have spent a day between us trying to find some ethically sourced little wooden animals…best not to ask…some of the things we do are:
We buy Fairtrade tea, coffee and, quite often, wine
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The paper we buy is recycled and we use eco-cleaning products
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We try to support other small local businesses too, working with some on a regular basis.
Environmental
What we do
Reducing our resource use just makes sense; it saves money and protects our environment, makes you wonder why we still need to make improvements!
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We keep our paper usage low by only printing when it is necessary and when we do using both sides of the paper & often printing two sheets to a page, and space left after that we use as scrap. When we are finally done with it we recycle the paper along with our glass
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We re-fill our printer ink cartridges
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With our office nice and centrally located all our staff walk/cycle to work at least sometimes, with half doing it everyday. We also use trains to get to meetings whenever we can and try to arrange things so we can combine trips.
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We try to make sure everything is switched off before we leave at night but, particularly with our server, it doesn’t always work.
We are making use of an otherwise empty building – an old chapel – so we are recycling a building rather than locating ourselves in a new-build office!
What needs improving?
There are still things we need to be doing:
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We don’t recycle plastic, cardboard and tins
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We need to start using energy efficient light bulbs
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Look into green energy
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We work in a lovely old chapel but that doesn’t make it very energy efficient.
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It is such an easy thing that we should really start switching off all our computers & equipment at the plug over night.
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Encouraging our suppliers to adopt similar CSR strategies
Honesty
We aim to be open, honest and tell the whole story warts and all in everything we do even if it negatively affects us in the short term. That is both in things like this document and also in the advice we give to organisations and companies.
Next Steps
What we are going to do to improve:
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