Environmental Social Governance (ESG)

In 2019 having, as a business we adopted an Environmental Social Governance (ESG) strategic approach to our business. This involved putting people first all of the time, be they our staff, our clients and partners, people in the community around us or charities which so desperately need our help.

In adopting this approach, we undertook to change the way we operated so as to minimise our impact on the world around us whilst using our skills and resource to help others who need it.

To achieve these results, we reviewed every aspect of our work, specifically:

• Our staff and how we support them
• The environment and how we can have a positive impact
• Our community, we identified causes that we believed would benefit from our help.

With the strategy in place we applied to CSRA for accreditation and achieved a silver award.

This year we applied for re-accreditation having spent the past three years working with the whole team to evolve our ESG strategy. During this time we have put ESG and social responsibility at the heart of our business and this does not just mean doing some volunteering in the local community, although that is a part of our work. Our work has covered a number of elements;

• Community; supporting the local community to help those less fortunate than ourselves
• Philanthropy; working to support charities deliver their services
• Workplace; ensuring our work environment is one where our staff can thrive and  achieve their goals and in doing so help us to meet our goals.
• Environment; working to minimise our impact on the environment, with the long term goal of becoming net zero.

The result of all our work has been a fantastic Gold Award from CSRA. This reflects our continuing commitment to the full spectrum of corporate social responsibility and the change from silver to gold was driven by our increased focus on the environment.

We are extremely proud of this achievement and will be working to continue to drive our social responsibility and encourage other businesses to do the same.

For more information on CSRA and what it means visit their website.

The Charterhouse Foundation

The Foundation has been set up to provide local groups access to specialist support that they might not otherwise have the chance to get. The Foundation does not give grants to charities but provides expertise and knowledge. Click here to read more.

Charities and Community Projects

We work with a number of charities and local community projects as part of our social responsibility commitment, including our Charity of the Year. For information on these charities click here.

Our Workplace

Our team are truly our biggest asset and over the past three years we have implemented a new development and evolution programme aimed at giving all our team the support they need not just to manage their daily workload, but to evolve and develop their skills and ultimately to ensure they get the most from their work, helping them all to achieve their life.

As a business we believe we:

• Have a great working environment where staff from all over the world come together and work as a team. Diversity is important to Charterhouse and we believe it has a positive benefit to the team as well as the work we do for clients.
• Invest in our team by appreciating that without a culture of support, teamwork and collaboration the organisation cannot reach a united vision. Whilst emphasising teamwork Charterhouse also respect the individual, the person they are and the way they work.
• Provide a variety of great benefits, including a commitment to employees’ health, both physical and mental as well as offering benefits to promote work life balance and a platform for employees to be active and socialise outside the office.
• Promote continuous development with internal and external training, including quarterly training updates for professional staff as well as offering study support for professional exams that benefit the employee and the business.
• We monitor engagement levels on regular basis and we encourage employees to provide us with feedback and suggestions for further development of the business.

The Environment

We strongly believe that every business has a duty to reduce their impact on the environment and we have reviewed the whole business to ensure we can achieve an overall reduction on our impact.

This has included:

• Working toward becoming a paperless office.
• Change of policy to remove the usage of plastic water bottles in the office.
• Removing disposable cups from the kitchen and replacing these with reusable cups and kitchen utensils.
• Employees have the option of requesting to work from home, one or more days per week which reduces the impact on the environment through travel.
• The office has been fitted with movement sensors to ensure that lights are only used where needed and others turn off automatically.
• We put up a hot water (boiling) tap in order to use less electricity when making teas.
• Staff have been offered a scheme to claim back £10 for buying a reusable portable cup.
• Shared shopping bags.