Setting our social agenda

An essential tenet of our service is our “THINK” customer charter (Teamwork, Honesty, Integrity, No-Nonsense, Knowledge). It commits us to an exemplary level of service, to innovation, to standards, and to support for our clients.

Championing Integrity

At our core is “Integrity” which to us creates a link between what we do, and the way we do it. It stands for working with strong moral beliefs and for doing the right thing, using our time, resource, income and influence, to support and improve people’s lives. To put it into practise, we utilise the principles of the Social Value Act 2012, which underpins our Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) Framework, and creates our business with purpose beyond profits.

Below is a sample of just some of what we do. If you’d like more information, please just ask.

Committed to environment

Our technology provides the opportunity for individuals and organisations to stay connected, with a lower carbon footprint than constant business travel. We’re continuing to work on reducing our environmental impact and focus on our environmental compliance and sustainable practices.

By imprinting this on everything we do, we are committed to constant carbon reduction, and improving environmental sustainability throughout the business including:

  • Our business premises: SCG South West has moved from two large older buildings into one modern building with improved utilisation, energy efficiencies and a brilliant new environment for our team. The interior has been fitted out to create a modern office space that supports how the business works now, and in the future, with a particular focus on natural light and a variety of flexible workspaces. The building includes air-to-air heat pumps, LED lighting technology, and full building insulation all sourced locally, in addition to powering the office with sourced renewable energy. We have a paperless office and have a fully supported zero-to-landfill waste management contract with a local provider. BSI will be conducting an audit to certify our new SCG South West office in April 2024. The 2013 renovation of our Head Office brought green credentials to the fore, giving us a building that in 2022 includes air-to-air heat pumps, LED lighting technology, and full building insulation all sourced locally, in addition to powering the office with sourced renewable energy. We have a paperless office and have a fully supported zero-to-landfill waste management contract with a local provider.
  • Flexible hybrid working: adopting our own technology, our staff are able to use hybrid working practices, providing a blended office- and home-based working to reduce unnecessary journeys.
  • Supplier selection: carbon cost and system efficiency are key components of our policy in selecting suppliers. For example, our primary and preferred call carrier is Gamma, which is a certified CarbonNeutral® company. They were the first network operator in the UK to go carbon neutral and are working towards carbon net-zero by 2042. Similarly, our preferred IT infrastructure is Microsoft which is on course to fully decarbonise and will be climate negative by 2030.

ISO14001 certification is now being rolled out across the newly rebranded Southern Communications group. SCG South West have an audit booked with BSI for April to obtain certification.

The ISO14001 certification accredits businesses for environmental management and more specifically their environmental performance.

We had a successful Stage 1 ISO14001 audit for group at the end of 2023, and BSI will be conducting final audits to certify our Head Office in Basingstoke in January and our Reigate office in February 2024.

Committing ourselves to our goals, we have signed the SME Climate Commitment pledge to “halve our emissions before 2030 and reach net zero by 2050” aligning with the UN Race to Zero campaign and the 1.5°C ambition.  

We’re also engaging with a certified third-party for an updated carbon reduction plan. They are supporting us to replace our manual carbon footprint calculation with a carbon reduction plan that meets the public procurement PPN 06/21 compliance requirements using the Government approved GHG Protocol. This will help us set our forward-looking objectives and priorities for carbon reduction for our business for the coming months.

Special thanks go to Terri Jackson for all her work for setting up the new office and for providing carbon footprint calculation input information to Positive Planet; and to Marianne Carter who is instrumental in our planning, processes, and compliance to hit our environmental goals.

Supporting our society

Believing in relationships and partnerships, our social impact strategy is derived and led by our employees and our clients, in response to their priorities. This has allowed us to support local and national charities, and to support our clients’ social objectives too. Examples include:

Youth career development through:

  • work experience & apprenticeships opportunities. Our Service Assurance Undergraduate, Matt Billings, originally joined SCG for a one-week work experience placement. Matt then worked a few additional days each week whilst he completed his BTEC & CTEC in IT and has since joined us as an undergraduate whilst he studies for is cyber security technical professional integrated degree apprenticeship with Gloucester College in partnership with the UWE.

  • in partnership with Stroud Council, we worked to achieve our Work Experience Charter as part of the Skills for Stroud initiative and are now regularly providing work experience placements to 15- to 21-year-olds. We work with each student to design an informative and practical period of work experience to suit their interests. We also participate in a number of school career fairs and exhibitions, engaging young people in the science behind good communications.

  • in partnership with several local schools, members of our team attend events, teaching interview techniques and conducting mock interviews, answering pupil questions, and showcasing telecommunication, cyber and technology roles at their careers’ fairs. This has had a direct impact on the employment pathways of many of their pupils, including some who have reselected their chosen qualifications in anticipation of a different role.

Charitable support and volunteering

Our team is encouraged to take days out of the office for volunteering, both with their own charities, and with charities that the business is working with at the time. Examples include:

  • meal provision, maintenance, and user engagement at The Butterfly Garden in Cheltenham

  • essential maintenance and winter gardening at the James Hopkins Trust Kite’s Corner garden

  • providing essential communications infrastructure including WiFi to Caring for Communities and People’s (CCP) winter foodbank “Hamper Scamper” appeal, supporting volunteers that handle more than 2,000 food box deliveries and more than 40,000 individual food items

  • collecting Christmas Trees as part of a recycling fundraiser for local hospice Longfield

  • sponsorship, fundraising, and awareness days for charities, including Hope for Tomorrow, Cancer Research, the Rotary Club, ECCT, Holly Gazzard Trust, and Dwarfism Awareness Day during 2021. Each is selected by a different member of our team, based on their personal connections and interests, something that we feel is incredibly important.

Education

Education and awareness of key issues, shared with our clients and connections, including:

  • a blog updated regularly and a quarterly newsletter with industry news and advice

  • dedicated internet safety information for Audley Villages, to help their residents stay safer online

  • visits, educational sessions, and Q&A sessions to support the residents of the retirement villages that we work with, including ExtraCare centres. This includes discussing telephony & broadband changes, and internet safety for example

  • working with a residential care client, we have devised a resident safeguarding protocol for dementia patients. Dementia patients risk isolating themselves by cutting off essential communication lines (phone, broadband etc.), so our safeguarding protocol trains our team to recognise the signs, and to prevent disconnection

  • one-to-one support for residents: all care residents are provided with our contact details, and although they are typically used to enact service changes, we have provided numerous instances of support in the last year with suspicious emails and URLs, COVID phishing scams and the like, preventing vulnerable clients from falling victim to malicious actors.

The way we’re governed

We are fast adopters of company-wide policy that supports our employees and clients, and improves our business impact. Our board is 50-50 male/female split with a female Managing Director. We have always focussed on skills, upskilling and education, and really believe in equal opportunities, working with those who fit our team and culture regardless of gender, ability, or existing skillset. Our pay is modelled by skillset and job role giving us the same pay for the same role, regardless of gender, which is particularly unique in a heavily male-dominated sector.

We have strong ethical standards and policies supporting all aspects of what we do, including an enshrined customer charter too.

If you have questions, would like to ask for our help, or want to understand more about what we are doing, please just ask on 0117 900 5000