3.5 Supporting our communities
Supporting our communities in which we work and controlling our environmental impacts
Environmental management
As almost all of our employees are office based, our
environmental impacts are limited to those associated
with normal modern office facilities. However we
understand that good environmental management is
integral to our business and are committed to
minimising the impact of our operations.
Climate change
Our most significant environmental impact is energy
consumption and we remain committed to reducing
our CO2 emissions where practical. In 2006 we
launched our Group Energy Reduction programme, to
reduce the amount of electricity used at 18 of our
largest UK sites by 12% by the end of 2008. We have
exceeded this target, reducing energy use by 18.3%,
an emissions reduction of 3,300 tonnes of CO2.
In 2008 our carbon footprint across the Group was
64,611 tonnes of CO2, an increase of 10.4% over the
year compared with an 18% growth in Group turnover
and a 23% increase in staff numbers. The reduction of
emissions achieved by the Group Energy Reduction
programme and increased education regarding energy
efficiency across the Group ensured that our carbon
footprint grew at a slower rate than our business.
We continue to work closely with the Carbon Trust to
educate our facilities managers and employees about
how they can reduce their own carbon footprints as
well as ours.
Our UK operations will be subject to the requirements
of the Carbon Reduction Commitment (CRC)
Regulations coming into force in April 2010. Our
preparation is progressing well and has been facilitated
by the work already carried out as part of the Group
Energy Reduction programme.
Transport
Our other significant environmental impact is business
travel. Emissions from travel have grown in recent
years as the Group expands, and the expansion of our
operations in India, Scotland and Ireland has meant a
particular increase in our air travel emissions.
We try to reduce business travel across the Group
through a number of initiatives. Video and
teleconferencing is now common place in our offices:
78,000 conference calls were made over the past year,
more than double the previous year. As well as
reducing our impact on the environment it offers
significant financial savings.
Almost all of our company cars (98.4%) run on diesel.
We promote the benefits of alternatives to car travel,
such as the use of public transport, and have
introduced shuttle buses to and from our larger offices.
We have also evaluated the Government’s ‘cycle to
work’ scheme and we aim to implement it across the
Group’s UK offices in 2009.
Waste management and recycling
As part of being a sustainable business we look at the
resources we use and how we recycle them or dispose
of them. We are committed to a range of initiatives
across all areas of our business, primarily focused on
reducing and managing our waste to maximise
recycling and minimise landfill. Where waste must be
disposed of, we ensure that it is handled responsibly
and in line with all legislation.
A number of Group-wide schemes enable employees
to recycle paper, toner cartridges, mobile phones, and
redundant IT and electrical equipment. We also aim to
use our influence with clients to help them reduce their
environmental impact. In 2008 we doubled our
virtualised server capacity, offering clients cheaper
data storage with lower carbon intensity.
As a significant purchaser, we encourage our suppliers
to provide us with better-value environmentally
responsible products. We have further developed our
relationship with Office Depot, and 18% of our total
spend is now on environmentally preferable products.
We are also working with Office Depot on an initiative
to replace corrugated packaging with reusable plastic
tote boxes across all deliveries to the Group.
Local community impact
Our business places us at the heart of the communities
we serve. We have a positive impact on these
communities through the improvement in services we
deliver for clients, the new jobs we create and our
community investment programme. We are
committed to working with our local communities,
managing any negative impacts of our business
operations and maximising the benefits.
The services we provide for our clients have a direct
impact on local communities. We work with our clients
to ensure the services we deliver on their behalf are
efficient, flexible and inclusive. By reducing local
authorities’ administration costs we allow more
funding to be directed to essential frontline services.
Community investment
In addition to the benefits our business and services
bring, we also donate both time and money to local
community initiatives. Our community investment
programme aims to tackle social exclusion of all kinds.
It is applied at 2 levels; through a central programme at
Group level and through the individual businesses at a
local level.
The programme has now been extended to include our
operations in India. Employees there have chosen to
focus on projects that improve the education and
health of the communities local to our Indian
operations.
We encourage our employees to engage with their
local communities. Following the success of the pilot
volunteering projects that we ran with Business in
the Community (BITC) in 2008, we are now rolling out
our employee volunteering scheme across the whole
Group. With BITC’s help we select projects and causes
where our help can make the most difference. Our
businesses are also free to support appropriate local
initiatives where we are approached directly by the
local community.
Charitable support
In January 2008, we began our 2 year partnership with
Macmillan Cancer Support. The charity was chosen by
a ballot of our employees from a shortlist of charities
they nominated. To date we have raised £360,000 for the charity towards our target of raising £1m over
2 years.
Employee fundraising events throughout the year
included Capita Challenge and Charity Week. Capita
Challenge, which has been running since 2004, is an
adventure race day where teams from our various sites
compete in mental and physical challenges whilst
raising money. In 2008, 82 teams took part, including
some from our clients and suppliers, and the event
raised £67,000 for Macmillan. Charity Week, which
involves fundraising activities at various business sites,
has also been running since 2004. Charity Week 2008
was our most successful yet, raising a further £67,000.
We also generated an additional £103,000 for
Macmillan by sponsoring the charity’s winter ball.
Over 1,600 employees choose to give to charity
through our payroll-giving scheme, donating just under
£120,000 during 2008. We received the Silver payroll
giving quality mark, recognising that over 5% of our
employees donate to charity through this scheme.
We have also introduced an additional fund to help
support some of our clients’ charities, working in
partnership with them on their charitable programmes.
Full details of our CR priorities, initiatives and
progress are set out on our corporate website at
www.capita.co.uk/corporate-responsibility,
where you can create your own online report
covering the topics you specify.
CR priorities
|
|
Aim |
|
Year end 2008 |
|
Year end 2007 |
Environment |
|
Continue to measure and assess our carbon footprint (tonnes CO2), to be measured annually.CO2 emissions rose 10.4% against increases in Group turnover of 18%, and staff numbers of 23% |
|
64,611 |
|
58,523 |
|
|
Raise awareness of environmental issues and Group initiatives across the business |
|
Established environmental section on employee intranet |
|
Ongoing |
|
|
Undertake environmental site audits twice a year |
|
Audits completed |
|
Audits completed |
|
|
Achieve 12% reduction in electricity used at our 18 largest sites by 2008 |
|
-18.3% |
|
-8% |
|
|
Continue switching fleet vehicles to diesel engines |
|
98.4% |
|
95% |
|
|
Achieve further ISO14001 accreditations at our higher impact sites |
|
47 |
|
37 |
| |
|
Further promote BT conference call facility |
|
78,000
conference calls |
|
34,463
conference calls |
Communities |
|
Corporate donations |
|
£0.6m |
|
£0.5m |
|
|
Raise meaningful sums for our corporate charities: In 2008 we set a target Raised of £1 mover 2 years for our new charity partner, Macmillan Cancer Support |
|
£360k |
|
–1 |
| |
|
Maximise the fundraising potential of our Group-wide Charity Week |
|
Raised £67k |
|
Raised £48k |
Health and safety |
|
Ensure we provide safe and productiveworking environments for all our employees (accident frequency rate per 1,000 employees (RIDDOR)) |
|
1.57 |
|
2.05 |
| |
|
Undertake health and safety site audits twice a year |
|
Audits completed |
|
Audits completed |
Senior management retention |
|
Attract and retain the appropriate level of senior management to drive the strategic direction of the Group (salaries exceeding £90k p.a.) |
|
88% |
|
89% |
Overall employee retention |
|
Attract and retain the right people to deliver Group strategy, maintaining |
|
82% |
|
82% |
Employees by location |
|
Have at least 10%of our workforce based in India by end 2009 |
|
8.9% |
|
4.5% |
Diversity of people |
|
Reflect the communities in which we work: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Male/female split |
|
52% male
48% female |
|
51% male
49% female |
|
|
Male/female split for management (salaries £50k – 89k p.a.) |
|
74% male
26% female |
|
81% male
19% female |
|
|
Male/female split for management (salaries exceeding £90k p.a.) |
|
88% male
12% female |
|
88% male
12% female |
| |
|
Ethnic diversity (employees from ethnic minority groups) |
|
15.5%3 |
|
8% |
Part-time working |
|
Provide flexible working hours while ensuring maximum flexibility in Group resources. Percentage of part-time employees of total work force |
|
15.5% |
|
17% |
Creating successful supplier relationships |
|
Annually audit all tier 1 suppliers against Capita’s standards of business |
|
100% |
|
50% |
|
|
Consistently increase the number of supplier audits across all our Group suppliers. 40% audited against a 23% increase in suppliers |
|
40%
audited |
|
41%
audited |