Company Elevation

Corporate Social Responsibility

A lot of companies think that Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is really only appropriate for large multi-nationals who want to show they are good guys at heart.  Often, it’s a bit of window-shopping to hide some fairly ruthless business practices but it’s a bit different for us.

We strongly believe that we have a responsibility to our people, our clients and our business environment.  We’re lucky to work in a great part of the world and our problems are really ‘first world’ problems but we don’t operate in a bubble – we’re a part of a community and we have a responsibility to contribute back to that community.

So, what does CSR mean for us?  Well, there‘s a few things we like to do:

 

Working at Daneswood

We work hard to be an equal opportunities employer and provide a flexible working environment that suits different people’s needs.  As a result, we’re happy to set working hours to suit the people that work here – if people have responsibilities for children or family that means that 9-5 hours don’t necessarily work for them then we’ll work out a work pattern that suits them.  We don’t ask people to work crazy hours either – that just leads to burn out and disillusionment, so we actively discourage a long working hours culture.

Daneswood and the environment

We try to minimise waste as much as we possibly can.  Only the minimum is tagged for landfill, and we separate all our recyclable materials. Our team are very environment conscious and do all we can to reduce waste and impact. Often this is the small things, like switching plastic water cups for glass, or moving to online proposals to reduce paper use. We can also offer “green” hosting, powered by renewable energy sources. See our Sustainability Policy here 

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Daneswood and the community

We’re lucky to have a lot of great clients and we’ve become very successful because of them.  We also want to give something back so we try and support a couple of charities on an ongoing basis rather than dipping in and out of a range of charities.  Charities we help include The Amber Foundation, Devon In Sight, a local charity sight loss charity based in Exeter, YMCA Exeter and The Baton, run by Alan Rowe, the Baton is a local charity with an international reach, supporting ex-Service personnel and their families in small but highly practical ways.

We’d love to help every deserving cause we come across but we feel it’s best to give what we can to just a couple of groups that we develop long term relationships with so that we can both benefit from the association.

We are delighted to be Headline Sponsors for Exmouth Pride. As part of our sponsorship of Exmouth Pride, we look after a wide range of aspects for them.

In addition to designing, maintaining and hosting the website. We have updated their logo, to reflect the increased diversity represented by the Pride movement. These can be seen in the wonderful flags we produced for them that proudly fly across the town, especially during the month of June.

We also assist with creation of marketing materials, such as leaflets and fliers to help promote Pride Day in Exmouth every year.

Investing in youth

We believe it’s important to give youth a chance. We regularly take work experience students from local schools and give them an insight into what working in digital means and what opportunities can lie ahead. We also take more qualified overseas students during the summer, who come to Exeter to train. These can be overseas designers, graphic designers and developers wanting a taste of how British clients are serviced with digital solutions.

We also like to grow the team by taking on Apprentices. Giving enthusiastic young people a chance to grow their careers with us is both highly fulfilling and a sustainable way to grow and develop a great team.