Judges thought the most impressive aspects of Hyder's approach to CSR was its effort to engage employees and the fact targets for 2009/2010 were agreed by senior management from its five geographic regions. These were to raise £30,000 for charity; donate 4,000 hours of staff time to charity work; establish a monitoring process for capturing data on waste, energy and water consumption; and to devise a system for recording employee travel data to set reduction targets for 2010.
The first step was to seek nominations from each of the regional managing directors for a local CSR representative. A CSR intranet site was launched outlining the targets and to provide regular updates on progress. The site has two trackers: one allows staff to record time they give to charity work or funds they raise; the other enables regions to record data on waste, energy use, water consumption and air travel.
The judges were impressed that the targets were not only met but they were substantially exceeded: £41,251 was raised for charity and employees have donated 4,586 hours of time to good causes, including two employees who spent two weeks in Uganda helping in the final construction phase of an orphanage building. Hyder Middle East raised £1,454 for the Red Cross Society of Sri Lanka to finance 139 water purifying filters, while Hyder UK has been helping children in Bristol to improve their literacy skills.
Hyder's CSR activities don't stop there. It has updated its fleet of cars to reduce CO2 emissions and introduced Microsoft OCS to enable staff to make voice over internet protocol (VOIP) calls, thus reducing face-to-face meetings and the need to travel.
FINALISTS
IAG
Sainsbury's
