Supporting our Employees in the Community

Our employees have a wide range of different skills, which they use to make a valuable contribution to the communities in which we operate.

Our employee volunteering programme aims to encourage as many people as possible to get involved with local community projects. As well as being a highly rewarding experience for the people involved, by offering staff time off work to help in the community we can build sustainable relationships with local charities and community organisations.

Supporting our employees’ contributions

We think it’s important to recognise and reward the contributions our employees make to the community in their own time. We do this in a number of different ways, including a Match Funding scheme, a Volunteer Award scheme and a Payroll Giving programme.

£4£

Through this scheme, we match every donation our employees make to charity, up to £1,000 per application. In 2011, our employees were involved in a wide range of fundraising activities, from a sponsored row across Lake Windermere to the Inca Trail Trek in Peru. Overall, during 2011 we matched £119,393 raised for charities and community groups through our £4£ scheme.

Volunteer Awards

This scheme rewards employees who do voluntary work in their own time, by offering them awards of up to £500 a year for their charity or community organisation.

Last year, we awarded 166 employees through the Community Volunteer Awards scheme, totalling £81,953. These donations have been gratefully received by various community groups and organisations and have been used to buy tangible goods – from new kit for local junior sports clubs to lifesaving equipment for search and rescue teams.

Payroll Giving

This programme enables employees to donate to charity straight from their gross salary each month – in 2011, our employees donated £72,218 in this way. Our corporate charity partner, Macmillan Cancer Support, was the most supported charity.