The primary aim of our Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) programme is to acknowledge the effect that our work has on our employees, society and our environment, and as such, to implement activities that have a positive impact on our community.
We demonstrate our commitment to CSR, through Kim Barber, our UK Insurance Practice Head, who represents our CSR programme at Board level. Committees, in London and Whitstable, oversee the delivery of our CSR initiatives on a local level.
Our corporate responsibility
Our role as a responsible employer is to operate first class employment practices and promote equal opportunities to ensure we attract and retain our high-quality people.
Through providing support to our staff, we have built a culture of trust, loyalty and mutual respect. This has allowed us to attract highly qualified and knowledgeable individuals and to create and retain what we believe to be one of the leading teams in the Lloyd's and general insurance industry.
In addition to providing an environment in which our people can thrive, we also understand the importance of providing a safe and healthy environment in which to work. We take this issue very seriously and provide our staff with training to help mitigate risks and to ensure that our staff clearly understand our health and safety policy.
We are proud of our culture. We believe that in order to succeed, our people must have common goals and objectives. The Chaucer Values of enthusiasm, expertise, integrity, teamwork, aspiration and inclusiveness lead the way when we work together as Chaucer and when we conduct business with clients, investors and suppliers.
Our values also provide a framework for the schemes that we undertake to develop, both the professional and personal skills of our employees. This includes a mentoring scheme and numerous volunteering schemes in which we participate.
Our social responsibility
We believe in responsible community participation and good citizenship. We encourage employees to participate in community programmes and provide each individual with two days a year that they can dedicate to a volunteering activity. In 2009, this was the equivalent of the Company offering 1,292 days for CSR-related activities.
Our London projects
- In August, the London office selected Cancer Research as its Charity of the Year. To date enough money has been raised to cover five months' running expenses for a clinical trial investigating hormone therapy to improve the treatment of prostate cancer.
- Support for Cayley School in Limehouse, London continued in 2009. Nine employees participated in the Reading Partners Scheme, managed by Tower Hamlets Business Partnership, dedicating over 167 hours to help 40 children develop their literacy and communication skills.
- A team of eight employees competed in the Great London River Race, rowing 22 miles in only two hours and 55 minutes. The team raised £5,000 for the sailing charity Ahoy, based in Deptford, South East London.
- Working in partnership with The Brokerage, a charity that helps create a pathway to the City for young residents of London's inner-city boroughs, we hosted a programme for 30 teenagers to provide an introduction to working in the Lloyd's industry.
- Other organisations supported throughout the year included the British eart Foundation, Bromley by Bow Centre, Cystic Fibrosis and the Coins Foundation, which aims to help the needs of the most excluded communities in the world.
- We also supported employees in their personal charitable achievements, including a double marathon in South Africa, moustache growing for the Prostate Cancer Charity and the Pedal to Paris cycle ride.
Our Whitstable projects
- At our Whitstable office, the home of our UK Division, staff dedicated 320 hours to local voluntary projects and made donations to 46 charitable organisations.
- Whitstable continued to support The Strode Park Foundation as its charity of the year. They raised enough money to purchase a physiotherapy table and a hoist for the charity that provides care and leisure services for people with disabilities.
- 13 staff helped create an outdoor children's play area for Abbot House Nursery in Kent.
- We donated ten crates of toys and games to the Misfits Motorcycle Club, who support children's hospital wards.
- We held a student careers day with the Financial Services Skills Council and Kent County Council for 30 children to introduce the insurance industry.
Our environmental responsibility
While the insurance business has a small impact on our carbon footprint, we are very conscious of our environmental responsibilities and the positive impact that we can have on our working and personal environment.
- We commissioned an audit to calculate our carbon footprint in London and Whitstable, focusing on our energy and paper consumption, corporate travel and employee travel to and at work. The audit set us a benchmark against which to improve in the future. We will launch campaigns aimed at making us more aware of how we can save energy and reduce our carbon footprint.
- We have recycling projects in place across the Group including those for paper, cardboard, plastic cups, printer and toner cartridges and mobile phones.
- Over the past seven years, Whitstable has recycled 149 tons of paper. This has saved the equivalent of enough electricity to power 149 three-bedroom homes for one year.
- We purchase environmentally friendly stationery materials, where appropriate.
- Our Whitstable office, for the past fiveyears, has run a scheme to conserve water and now saves over 8,000 litres of water a month.
- We adopted an area of the Thames Estuary beach in Whitstable. 21 staff participated in five projects between April and September to clean the beach.
We continue to work with other Lloyd's market agencies to mitigate the effects of climate change through our active membership of ClimateWise and support for its principles, which provide a framework for insurance companies worldwide to set out how they will build climate change into their business operations.
This is our second year as a member of the ClimateWise scheme. Our progress against the six key principles and details of our other CSR-related activities are included in the CSR section of our website at www.chaucerplc.com.