Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is a broad subject which means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. We believe that if CSR is done right, it's more than an afterthought thrown up on a page somewhere and forgotten about. It should involve not just an acknowledgement of what a company is doing right, but what it can improve on. If it's done right, it shouldn't be necessary to read a dedicated page like this to see that a company takes its social responsibilities seriously, because it should permeate every other relevant policy and piece of documentation.
We are in the process of making sure out CSR efforts are complementary to our company values. Eventually, if we're doing it right, we expect these two things to merge together.
Environment Responsibility
We are currently carbon negative (we remove more carbon than we are responsible for releasing) and have been since 2018. We achieve that by a combination of minimising our carbon consumption where possible, and where not possible by offsetting our carbon footprint through Ecologi (before October 2020 we used Carbon Footprint). Our target is to be climate negative and remove or offset more than 100% of our environmental impact. Remote working helps keep our carbon footprint down a lot! We do attend some conferences and so have a limited amount of international travel. We offset the carbon from those trips separately from our regular Carbon Footprint offsetting.
We encourage recycling wherever possible. Our computers are donated to the excellent WeeeCharity in the UK (and we will find comparable services for employees in other countries as they join us). Being a digital product business, we are already largely paperless and we have continued to push in that direction as far as possible so far - all company bills, statements and anything else we can avoid printing, we do - and we recycle the paper we do use.
With remote working, we have a limited influence over the usage and sources of power and water our employees use. However, we are looking at ways to encourage fully renewable power supply and similar environmentally friendly work practices for remote employees. Where we do have control over our supply, we use 100% renewable power.
Ethical Responsibility
- We believe in fair hiring. We believe that your race, gender, nationality and background should not affect your hiring prospects. We are still working out how to make sure we're living up to this belief.
- We believe in fair pay and are a Living Wage Employer.
- We believe in fair treatment of customers. We handle requests and complaints in the same way we would wish to be treated ourselves when we have an issue with a company.
- We believe in fair treatment of colleagues. We are still working out how to form that principle into a policy.
- We believe in a strong life-work barrier. Your time outside work is your own and we will not make demands on your time when you are not working, unless absolutely necessary (and to be clear, a server going down doesn't qualify as "absolutely necessary" unless it affects customers and nobody else can possibly deal with it). You are not expected to read or reply to company communications when you're not working. You are usually free to say what you like on social media outside work, although we do still expect you to respect the privacy of customers and colleagues (see our social media policy.
Philanthropic Responsibility
- We donate regularly to Médecins Sans Frontières.
- We donate regularly to the Trussel Trust in the UK.
- We support the Wikimedia Foundation with regular donations.
- We are exploring ways we can support organisations which promote literacy, like The World Literacy Foundation and Room to Read.
- We are exploring ways to enable employee volunteering on company time.
- We offer discounts for all of our products to non-profits and educational institutions.
Our Supply Chain
We are currently working on understanding our broader impact through our suppliers and how they approach their own social responsibilities. Where appropriate and possible, we will move away from a supplier whose approach to those responsibilities is incompatible with our approach.
