Corporate Social Responsibility

Skills for Success

A group of year 10 students, aged 15, spent a day with one of our London offices to raise aspirations. The young people had been identified by their schools as at risk of becoming NEET (not in education, employment or training) after they take their GCSE’s in summer 2012. Ten employee volunteers designed and ran the different segments of the day. One of the highlights was a Dragon’s Den style competition where two teams pitched their ideas for a new mobile phone app.

Feedback from those involved

"It made a real difference for the students to see the world of work first hand, rather than just hearing about it in school. They could visualise themselves sitting around the boardroom and know now that it’s achievable for them if they’re willing to put the hard work in."

Charity team leader

"I’ve got new gratitude for my job and for the hard work I’ve done to get here."

Philip, Employee

"Can I have a job here? I can start tomorrow!"

Student

An ongoing partnership has been developed with Whizz Kidz, a charity providing mobility equipment and wheelchairs for young people. Our support has focused on strategic campaign advice, online marketing strategy, design asset creation and email campaigning.

For example, one of our creative agencies, Tamba, created a viral video game that topped the online game chart with over 300,000 plays.

A small team of employees, led by an L&D team leader, designed and ran a workshop for a group of homeless people at the Cardinal Hume Centre, London. The workshop helped participants think about their own personalities as a unique brand. It built self-confidence and enabled them to identify obstacles and work towards achievable goals.

Our current global charity partner is SOS Children’s Villages. They are the largest orphan charity in the world, working in 124 countries and supporting 518 villages.

Since 2009 we’ve donated almost £200,000. This has gone to SOS projects in Africa, China, Haiti, India and Syria.

Currently we’re focused on providing funding for a new village in Chipata, Zambia. The construction of buildings is already well underway and will be officially opened in the second half of 2012.

In recent months we’ve also been fundraising for SOS humanitarian relief efforts in East Africa. The region is suffering its worst famine for 60 years.

In 2010, we invested in some flip cameras for the ‘Our Africa’ project. These allow children across Africa to create short films and tell their own fascinating stories:http://www.our-africa.org/

Our employees have got involved with a wide variety of fundraising activities including: marathons, 10km runs, football tournaments, motorbike treks, golf days, auctions, raffles, piano recitals, cake and bake sales and dress down days. Whatever they raise, SThree matches.

We currently fund two scholarships at the University of Manchester and two at the University of Birmingham. Degree programmes include: Accounting and Finance BSc; Accounts, Management and Information Systems BSc; and Politics, Philosophy and Economics BA. A further two students will be supported at Birmingham from October 2011.

This year we’re measuring our UK carbon footprint for the third time. It will take into account CO2 emissions across office suites (electricity, gas and water), car fleet as well as paper use. In the future we’ll also include air and train business travel.

Our 2008-2009 UK carbon footprint was estimated at 2,423 tonnes of CO2.

In 2010, we offset our UK carbon footprint by investing in two Verified Carbon Standard ClimateCare projects:

• Bagasse (sugarcane pulp) project in India
• Mani Hydro power station in Yonghong, China

Between 2010 and 2011 we set up recycling schemes for almost all of our UK offices. Only a handful are left to organise. We begin rolling the scheme across our European offices in October 2011.

We’re always looking for ways to make our operations more resource efficient. For example, we have made heavy investments in Video Conferencing equipment across all office sites to reduce air travel. Long term, this will save costs, time and CO2 emissions.